Personal and job characteristics of mothers with paid jobs in receipt of an employer top-up to their maternity or parental benefits (2008)
Percentage of employees working alternative work arrangements, by sex (2005)
Percentage of employees participating in selected non-wage benefits and family support programs through their employers(2005)

Percentage distribution of working-age, low income families and children by work status of main income recipient (2006)
Percentage of individuals who worked full-time (30 hours or more per week) for a full-year (49-52 weeks) with wage and salary earnings of less than $20,000 before income taxes, by Province/Territory (2005)
Minimum wage and percentage of employees who worked for the minimum wage, by Province (2008)

Distribution of after-tax household income and net worth by income and net worth quintiles (2005)
Average net worth (wealth) for all households (families and unattached individuals) by quintiles, in constant 2005$ (1999 and 2005)

Men and women's sense of belonging to their local community, by age group (2008)
Population aged 15 and over who report a "very strong" sense of belonging to Canada, Province, Community, by age group (2003-2008)

hange is a key concept for any family analyst.
The family, with its crucial functions, does
not expire, it changes. In varying ways, it
adapts and bends and of course in turn, it influences.
Frederick Elkin (1964), The Family In Canada,
The Vanier Institute of the Family

When Canadians look back at their parents’ and their
grandparents’ lives, they recognize patterns of both
continuity and change. Most Canadians choose to
live their lives with and for others in the context of the
families they create, as did their parents and grandparents. However, the social and cultural, economic and
technological environments in which this is done have
changed dramatically over the course of history, and
certainly since the time Professor Elkin’s observations,
some 50 years ago. And just as society has changed, so
too have families. What families “look like”, how and
when they form, what they do, how they feel, and the
challenges they face, are in many ways, far different
from the experiences of earlier generations. Families
shape, and are shaped by, the communities and societies in which they are imbedded.
History has also given rise to considerable diversity in
our individual and collective family experiences. We
can easily observe that our communities are home to
many different kinds of families, which are themselves

in constant transition as people move through the
course of their lifetimes.
We see around us men and women who are married to
one another and we recognize them as a family whether
or not they intend to have children. We see men and
women raising children on their own without a partner.
We see unmarried couples living together, with and
without children, in committed and intimate relationships, sharing their lives, providing for and caring for
one another. We see gay and lesbian couples caring for
each other and raising children together. We see adult
children living with parents or siblings. We see young
couples just beginning their lives as families, parents with
pre-schoolers and adolescents, and empty nesters whose
children have gone on to establish their own households
and families. We see families that draw upon a wide variety of ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious traditions.
And, we see families that go about the daily business of
family living in different ways on farms and in cities, with
one, two and sometimes three or more income earners.
The science of public opinion polling tells us that most
Canadians today would agree there is no such thing
as a “typical” family; these same Canadians would
also say that few things matter more to them than
the well-being of their families. How then, in a world
which is constantly changing, and in which family life

is characterized by diversity and adaptation, are we to
understand the continuing importance and centrality
of family in our lives?
Part of the answer lies in the simple fact that being
part of a family is among the most universal of human
experiences. Our early years as children and our transitions into and throughout our adult lives take place in
and through the relationships that comprise families
– whether as spouses, parents, siblings, or grandparents.
And our individual experiences tell us that our family
relationships can be healthy and supportive, or sometimes abusive and destructive, and of course, everything
in between. Who we are as individuals, is at least in part,
an expression of our experiences as family members. As
individuals, we know that our own families matter.
But we also recognize that families, in all of their
diversity, share a commonality of purpose. Families
demonstrate how, as individuals, we accept responsibility for each other. Within the diversity that surrounds
us, we see relationships of mutual affection, commitment, obligation and responsibility, much like the ones
we have – or might hope to have – in our own lives.
The commitment of family members is profound. It
is not simply that we are willing to support another
for their sake. Instead, in families, each individual
knows that their own individual well-being is inextricably tied to the well-being of their loved ones. In our
families, we share not only our memories and our love
and laughter but also the pain of an illness or injury,
the anxiety of a job lost, the disappointment of a hope
unfulfilled. In our families, our interests are very much
defined by the interests of others. Within families,
we encounter the opportunity and responsibility to
act not just as isolated individuals but as spouses and
lovers, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons
and daughters.
From a functional perspective, we also understand that
“what families do” is of vital importance, both to the
health and well-being of individual family members, but
as importantly, to the vitality, security, and prosperity of
the larger communities in which we live. Within families, individuals provide for and care for one another,
they teach and discipline, they are financially, economically and psychologically inter-dependent and, last but
not least, they express their love for one another.

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For many years, the Vanier Institute has been guided
by an inclusive definition of the family that emphasizes
what families do. As such it has employed a definition
that directs attention toward the work and accomplishments of people who commit themselves to one
another over time. Accordingly, the Vanier Institute
has sought to acknowledge and respect family as:
…any combination of two or more persons who are
bound together over time by ties of mutual consent,
birth and/or adoption or placement and who, together, assume responsibilities for variant combinations of
some of the following:
•
•

Physical maintenance and care of group members
Addition of new members through procreation or
adoption
• Socialization of children
• Social control of members
• Production, consumptions, distribution of goods
and services, and
• Affective nurturance – love.
Within the pages of Families Count: Profiling
Canada’s Families IV, readers will discover the many
ways in which the structural, functional and affective
dimensions of family life have changed. Today’s families are smaller. Adults wait longer to marry if they
do so at all. Common-law unions are no longer just
a preliminary or trial stage before marriage but, for
many, an alternative to marriage. On average, Canadians wait longer than did their parents or grandparents
to have children. They are more likely to separate or
divorce. In less than a lifetime, the dual-earner family
has gone from an exception to the norm, and a growing number of women are primary income earners
within their families. In contrast to the past when
most children growing up with only one parent were
living with a widow or widower, the children growing
up today with a lone parent are most likely to have
another living parent, albeit a mother or, as is most
often the case, a father living elsewhere. All of these
changes, and many others, can only be understood
against the backdrop of wider social and economic
trends: the evolution of a global economy, increasing
respect for human rights, the emancipation of women,
the migration of populations between and within
countries, as well as from the country into cities, and
the many technological innovations that have so

profoundly changed the ways in which we work, play,
communicate, and care.
The profiles also reveal the many challenges and difficulties individuals face in carrying out their family
responsibilities and obligations, and in realizing
their aspirations, hopes and dreams. Two basic resources all families require are time and money, and
for a growing number of families, these basics are in
short supply. Family and child poverty remain persistent social problems, while enormous inequalities
of wealth and income continue to separate rich and
poor. Particularly vulnerable are Canada’s Aboriginal
families, new immigrants and families that rely on a
single earner. Stress and illness associated with worklife conflict are common experiences, most notably
among employed mothers with pre-school age chil-

Much of the statistical information presented is
derived from the variety of household surveys conducted by Statistics Canada, and in particular, the
Census. These surveys restrict the definition of a family member to those occupying the same dwelling (see
Technical Note). The definition owes much to that
which can be objectively measured – who lives with
whom and under what circumstances. This approach
captures much that is essential to notions of family as
people living together in a long-term relationship. It
is, however, a definition that sets aside much else that
is important to the lives of families, like the emotional bonds that continue to tie parents and children
to one another even after the children have left home.
It also fails to reveal much about the relationships
between siblings once they have left home or between
grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Fortunately,

As we move toward the future, the resiliency and
adaptability of families will no doubt impress us
once again, but it should not be taken for granted.
dren. With the expansion of the global economy,
higher education has become a near-prerequisite to
a reasonable wage, yet many families are unable to
adequately save for their children’s education. And
in the wake of the baby boom years, the long-term
decline in fertility rate has created, and will continue
to create, enormous challenges in the caring capacity
of families as parents age and fewer children, often
separated by distance, are available for support.
How we choose to respond to these and other challenges,
not just as individuals, but as a society, is vitally important, but largely unaddressed here. The goal of Families
Count is to provide a broad overview of the trends, and
to identify some of the implications and challenges they
pose. Where we leave off, is where we invite readers to
join in. What are the implications and challenges as you
see them? Do current practices, policies and programs
intended to support families do so fairly and equitably?
What kinds of supports might be provided to better
acknowledge and support the essential work of families?

other Statistics Canada surveys and research have
been able to shed some light on these other important family ties.
The noted sociologist Elise Boulding once described
family as “the adaptive mechanism in society that
helps us get over the rough spaces as we move from
one era to another. It provides elasticity in the social
order so that we can stretch and contract, make shifts
in size, grouping, and organizational patterns”**. As
we move toward the future, the resiliency and adaptability of families will no doubt impress us once again,
but it should not be taken for granted. The capacity of
families to make and respond to change is more than
an innate characteristic of individual family members;
it is something to be nurtured, strengthened and supported by society at large.
**Elise Boulding (1981), “The Place of the Family in Times of Social
Transition: A Public Lecture.” The Vanier Institute of the Family, p.8.

Acknowledgements
T
he first edition of Families Count, published in
1994, was called Profiling Canada’s Families.
This ground-breaking work was released to
coincide with the International Year of the Family. The
second edition appeared in 2000 at the start of the new
millennium, the third – in 2004. The Vanier Institute
of the Family is pleased to publish the fourth edition of
a resource that continues to meet the needs of many
Canadians who seek to understand the character and
circumstances of Canada’s families.

the future but, equally, on the foundations of memories embedded in the history of Canadian families.

A project of this scope draws on the energies of many. I
would like to acknowledge and thank all those who contributed their energies and expertise to Families Count.

Jenni Tipper brought her wonderful insight and
perspective to bear on all aspects of the project; she
helped develop the framework within which the facts
and figures are presented and copy edited the final text,
keeping the publication focused on its key theme: the
diversity of family life in Canada.

Roger Sauvé, the President of People Patterns Consulting,
once again applied his experienced hand to gathering and
analysing much of the data presented in this databook
and preparing a draft of several sections. Roger has
worked with the Institute for many years and we have
come to appreciate his skills and talents tremendously.
Dr. Eric Sager, one of Canada’s leading historians of
the family, has contributed a wonderful essay that
reminds us that the future of Canada’s families will be
built, not only on the basis of hopes and aspirations for

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Families Count has been a team effort from start to
finish. At the Vanier Institute, Clarence Lochhead,
the Executive Director, spearheaded the work on the
fourth edition and brought his considerable skill to
bear on the review of the research and text. He brings
to all of the work at the Vanier Institute his interest,
understanding and passion for families in Canada.

Jennifer Brownrigg coordinated the distribution and
promotion of the publication and the development of
the on-line version of Families Count. The publication
of Families Count in an electronic format represents
a significant milestone for the Institute and its efforts
to reach and engage new audiences around issues of
family life in Canada. Tim Woods of the Deliberation Network provided excellent advice in this regard,

helping us develop an effective communications and
distribution strategy for the project.
Sara MacNaull provided considerable assistance with
the research and production of the publication, helping out in numerous capacities, keeping us all focussed
on the tasks at hand. Lucie Legault ensured that the
copies of Families Count reached their intended audience and Paula Theetge was the “go-to” person on all
questions financial.
Once again, the Institute relied on the talents of the
great translators at Anglocom. We sincerely thank
them all for the careful and insightful work in the
preparation of the French version of this edition,
published as La famille compte: Profil des familles
canadiennes IV. We also thank Daniel Chemla, member of the Institute and Communication Consultant,
who provided an insightful review of the French text.
Special thanks go to Grant Schellenberg, Martin
Turcotte, and the many other researchers and statisticians at Statistics Canada. Families Count – and much
of the research published by the Vanier Institute –
relies on the high quality data and reports produced
by Statistics Canada, recognized around the world for

excellence. It is the key national institution tracking
the patterns of continuity and change in the lives of
Canadians and their families.
And a special mention goes to Peter Handley of phd
creative. Peter has been an invaluable member of our
project team throughout this process, bringing his creative
insight and skill to the production of the print and
electronic versions. This beautiful publication is his work.
The Vanier Institute gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Official Languages Support Programs at the Department
of Canadian Heritage.
Finally, our thanks to the many readers of the first
three editions of Families Count who have told us that
Families Count is a key resource for all interested in
understanding family life in Canada.
Katherine Scott
Director of Programs
Project Director and Principal Author of Families Count
Vanier Institute of the Family

amily” is one of the most complex and
fascinating words in the English language.
The word can be applied to social groups of
many shapes and sizes. When a person has a baby, they
are “starting a family.” When a sports team has a high
degree of cohesion and solidarity, its members declare
it to be a family. When a nation is united, it is a happy
family; if part of the nation threatens to separate, it is
contemplating a divorce. When a nation misbehaves in
the eyes of its peers, it is removed from the family of
nations. As these examples suggest, “family” is never
just a social unit; it is also an ideal, or a symbolic
construct, and the word is the bearer of values
embedded in the context of its use.
Let me suggest another level of meaning. Family is
what we remember it to be. We all think we know
what a family is, because we were all brought up in
families. Even those who spent their childhoods in
orphanages found surrogate families that became real
to them. And how easily is becomes ought! We know
what family ought to be, especially if ours was broken
or conflicted or absent. Every individual’s understanding of family is shaped by his or her past. It follows that
family is always a historical construct. This is true for
individuals, and it is equally true for an entire society

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or nation. Everything about family in Canada today is
shaped by our remembered past, our social memory.
Consider the meaning of family in the world of Frances
Stewart of Upper Canada in the 1830s. She describes
the work of her daughters, all under the age of 16.
Anna Maria is the general overseer of the household concerns, who makes all the preserves and
pickles, cakes, etc. She also has the care of Johnny,
the third boy, who is now over five years old….
Ellen mends all the stockings for the little boys and
repairs their clothes. She has the care of George in
particular who is three; besides this she is manager
and caretaker of the poultry. In spring she attends
to the sowing and raising of plants and nurseries of
young apple trees. Bessie is in charge of Charlie, the
infant, she is always busy and can make most of her
own underclothes and knits.
Here is a small window onto a rural and farming
society, now lost to most but not all Canadians. The
daughters are farm workers, caregivers, and artisans.
They sow and reap, they tend livestock, they preserve
and prepare food, they make clothing, and they are
child care workers. For these youth, as for the people

of New France a century before, there is no individual
identity, no personality, apart from one’s membership
in a family, with all the labour and duties entailed in
such membership. This Upper Canadian family, like
the families of New France, is a patriarchal economic
co-operative dedicated to survival and to the inheritance of a patrimony that would help secure the next
generation in their own families. Note also something
about Frances Stewart’s choice of words: she refers to
“household” not “family” concerns. The family was not
just a married couple and their biological offspring.
Rather it was a household – a co-resident group, larger
and more complex than the small co-resident “family” unit of our own time. That household of the early
1800s included parents, several children, other relatives, and non-kin such as servants and lodgers.
During the last half of the 19th century the foundations
of the rural family-household began to erode.
Compulsory schooling, beginning in Ontario in the

collided with the new realities, and the first great family
“crisis” was the result. Some feared that the family was
dying: “We may expect to see further disintegration
until the family shall disappear…In all things civil and
sacred the tendency of the age is towards individualism…its plausible aphorisms and popular usages
silently undermining the divine institution of the
family.”1 Others noticed that the tiny number of legal
divorces was rising in the early 1900s – to an average
of 54 a year between 1911 and 1914! Divorce, a moral
evil associated with Americans, seemed to undermine
the patriarchal foundation of the family. As one MP
said: “Where will this country come to in twenty-five
years if we are going to grant divorces simply because
some woman has been disappointed in regard to her
husband…? The whole social fabric of the country
would go to pieces.”2
Churches, moral reformers and the Canadian state
embarked on a crusade to save marriage, children and

Everything about family in Canada today is shaped
by our remembered past, our social memory.
1870s and gradually adopted by other provinces, took
children under the age of 12 out of the home and
gradually limited their role as family workers. Manufacturing and retailing slowly replaced home-based
production. Fathers, more often than mothers, took
wage-paid jobs and sometimes their teen-aged offspring followed them, especially when they lived in the
growing urban centres. The family was still an economic
unit, but it was shrinking in size, and its members no
longer worked beside each other on the same tract of
land. Behaviour changed, especially in towns or cities
where mobility and social contact expanded. Young
people were meeting and choosing their marriage
partners, often outside the networks and preferences
of parents, although usually with parental consent.
The memory of the farm family endured, however,
sustained in many places by the fact that it still existed
in the predominantly rural society of the early 20th
century. Memory gave birth to an ideal – a multigenerational, harmonious family in which each
member was devoted to the welfare of all. The ideal

family. Aboriginal peoples were told to abandon their
kin networks and longhouses, and to live like European families. In 1890, the federal government made
polygamy a criminal offence. As historian Sarah Carter
argues, Canada’s nation-building strategies included
the imposition of monogamous heterosexual marriage
as the basis of family formation. In Quebec, the Catholic Church, aware that marital fertility was declining,
strengthened its pro-natalist family rhetoric. Temperance and prohibition movements defended the family
against the evils of liquor. Child savers and moral
reformers proclaimed the sacred duty of motherhood.
Child protection acts and a federal juvenile delinquency
act in 1908 set out to save children from neglectful
parents, and to make the state a surrogate parent when
courts determined that parents were incapable.
Modern Canadian family policies emerged from these
and other moral, legal and political actions. Although
well-intentioned and often necessary responses to
pressing social problems, these actions were guided
by an idealized myth of family and moral panic. The

family was changing in its size, composition and work
patterns – but predictions of its death were premature.
Too often policies and reforms treated symptoms
rather than causes. Working-class families did not need
sermons on the “demon drink” or pamphlets on nutrition. In the working-class neighborhoods of Canadian
cities just over a century ago, one out of every three
or four babies died before reaching their first birthday. They died of preventable diseases, including the
diseases of poverty. Families needed pasteurized milk,
clean water, stable employment, and housing.
Families changed again in the first half of the twentieth century. By 1951 the co-resident family was much
smaller than ever before: 3.7 people on average, compared to about five at the beginning of the century. The
baby boom was a brief interruption in the long decline
in marital fertility that had begun in the 19th century.
The average age of men and women at first marriage
had declined significantly. By the 1950s and 1960s
teen-agers were staying longer in the parental home
than their grandparents had done. Now, more than
ever before, the transitions to adulthood – moving
into one’s own residence, moving into the labour force,
and marrying – occurred quickly, often overlapping
rather than happening in a slow sequence. Changes in
housing supply and the growth of suburbs helped to
create a new dream – the single-family detached home
– and the dream was coming true for a larger proportion of the population. The co-resident family was
reduced in size and meaning: it was a “nuclear family”
of parents and their own children, living in a new kind
of privacy, usually without servants or lodgers or other
non-kin. The result was a new “familialism” – a culture
that celebrated an idealized family form, the suburban
nuclear family of the television sitcoms Leave It to
Beaver and Father Knows Best.
Historians, novelists and film-makers in Canada and
the United States, who are very good at puncturing
myths and stereotypes, have blown away the nostalgia
and uncovered a dark underside to family life in the
postwar decades: alienation, sexism, family violence,
homophobia, frustrated expectations of affluence,
and much more. One American myth-buster made
the point about the “nostalgia trap” in the title of her
book: The Way We Never Were.3 But an ideal puts deep
roots into culture and memory. The memory of that
nuclear family of the postwar years endured, and for

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many it became a sacred trust. “The traditional family
unit of a married man and woman with children is…
the one true family unit. Other forms of household are
simply not families.”4
The postwar family ideal contained within it an
assumption about the work roles of family members:
the assumption that the male “head” of household was
the breadwinner. He went into the world of work to
earn a “family wage.” The wife-mother was a homemaker, the bearer of children, and the manager of the
domestic domain. The ideal reflected at least one important reality: gender ideology was very powerful in
Canada, and it sank deep roots into the world of work.
Most obviously, gender meant that women moved into
wage-paid or salaried employment slowly and more
intermittently than did men. Women took paid jobs,
but usually when they were young and single, or if they
were widows. In 1901, only 16.5% of all women aged
15 and over reported an occupation to census enumerators; among married women, less than four per cent
reported an occupation – a labour-force participation
rate much lower than for married women in European
countries, and lower even than in the United States.
These participation rates crept slowly upwards through
the first half of the century, but remained low in 1951,
despite the large numbers who took jobs or entered the
armed forces during the Second World War. It would
be a mistake to imagine that the spheres of men and
women never overlapped; but the balance and content
of work and family life were very different for women
than for men.
Slowly – too slowly for some and too quickly for others – Canadian governments developed a so-called
“welfare state.” Taken together, the policies and institutions of social security were the core of Canada’s family
policies. The welfare state did not transfer responsibility for health and material security from individuals
and families to the state; on the contrary, the welfare
state was designed to offer support and incentives to
families in providing for their own welfare. Old age
pensions would help families to care for their elders,
rather than leaving them to enter institutions or hospitals or to live on the streets. Unemployment insurance
was designed to allow workers to move to find jobs.
The first universal welfare entitlement was explicitly
about family: “family allowances” were enacted in
1944 and remained in place until in 1992, when they

were replaced by a child tax benefit. The “family” in
Family Allowances equated with children: the benefit
was scaled according to the number and age of children. The allowance was paid to mothers as managers
of the household economy, and so it reflected and
reinforced a family ideal assumed to be “traditional”
and normal. The family consisted of a male household
head who was the principal breadwinner, a wife-mother who stayed in the home to prepare food and manage
the household, and their dependent non-working
children. This family, so the policy said, now had the
means to ensure its own welfare.
A cultural ideal can be remarkably durable: it can
live longer than the social reality which gave it some
credibility. And so it was with the mid-century nuclear
family. In the 1950s, an increasing proportion of

origins. Communications and transportation technology undermined the equation of family with household: the family nexus of parent-child-grandchild did
not require co-residence to sustain an intense personal
and physical proximity. New patterns and sources of
immigration to Canada brought new mixes of kinship
and family values.
Canada’s family policies have failed to keep pace with
these realities, although laws relating to marriage,
divorce, and children have changed. Policies related
to children remain cash oriented, especially for young
children. In recent years a spousal and common-law tax
credit helps one-earner couples subsidize the cost of a
full-time spouse at home. The introduction of maternity and parental leave was the major innovation in the
last half of the 20th century. Another major innova-

Family law and policy in Canada are now characterized by a flexible pluralism
that reflects the acceptance of multiple traditions and changing family forms.
women, including married women, moved into the
labour force. The labour-force participation of women
continued to increase until the work-family balance
of women was much closer to that of men, although
it never achieved parity, still less equality. Fertility
decline and increasing life expectancy changed the
life course of women and changed the family. The
idea that a wife was primarily and even exclusively a
homemaker, and that she would be available to care
for children at home, collided with the new realities
of the late 20th century: child rearing was only one
segment of the long life course of women; women were
multi-taskers, working in and beyond the home. The
idea that father earned the “family wage” no longer
made sense when the earnings of wives were critical to the family’s standards of living. The idea that a
“family” was always a single, stable entity consisting
of two heterosexual adults united for the rest of their
life course, and the biological offspring of their union,
became much more difficult to sustain, although many
tried to preserve that ideal. The family became a fluid
and highly variable micro-social unit: it could include
parents who were not married at all, married parents
of the same sex, and blended groupings of varying

tion – a national system of preschool child care – was
promised but not delivered. Canada lags far behind
most OECD countries in its provision of early childhood education. Canada’s cash benefits for families,
although amounting to several billions per year, are
small by international standards.5 The Canadian preference for parental leave and modest cash support reflects
and reinforces the old ideal, so firmly rooted in social
memory, that a parent, usually the mother, stays home.
Our family policies, like the family itself, are the outcomes of a long and complex history. For much of that
history, social memory has told us what family is and
what it ought to be. And in every generation, social
memory struggles to adapt to the changes that it witnesses. Canadians understand family, and devise policy
for family, in specific historical conditions. These
include the long survival of the rural family into the
industrial era; the slow integration of women into paid
work; and the vast size of our country and its seemingly inexhaustible natural resources, which told policy
makers that there was always a sufficiency of work
and food, if families would only organize themselves
properly and work hard. Canada’s liberal ideology

may also have placed limits on family law and policy.
Our common law gave priority to property as the
pre-eminent legal relationship, and to the individual
as the primary legal entity. In contrast to French and
Italian law, the common law has given less emphasis to
the family as a juridical entity with a collective interest
that might take priority over the interests of individual
family members. Canadian family law has evolved
rapidly in recent decades, and much has been added,
but the emphasis is still very much on individual rights
and individual access to the benefits of family.
Family law and policy in Canada are now characterized
by a flexible pluralism that reflects the acceptance of
multiple traditions and changing family forms. Memories and ideals are being reconstructed, and few of us
imagine that there is a single model of family that is
“traditional,” any more than we imagine that Canada is
a nation with a singular identity. Examine our history,
and we find a diversity of families and households, and
we find change. Look into your own family memory,
and you are also very likely to find diversity and
change. In my own life as a child and teen-ager, I lived
at various times in a two-generation nuclear family
household, a multiple-family household, a single-par-

ent household, a solitary household, and non-family
institutions. Such experience persuades me to equate
change and diversity with strength and tolerance, not
weakness and instability.
We know family not by what it is, but by what it does.
I conclude by remembering a very famous Canadian
family: it consisted of an elderly spinster, her brother,
and a non-kin child – Anne of Green Gables. We
know this small group to be a family, not by its form,
which was as untypical a century ago as it would be
today, but rather by what those people did with and
for each other. Family exists in such doing and sharing,
such collective action and mutual support, and it exists
in the active memories of Canadians from families of
many traditions. In such critical social memory, renewing itself in every generation, lies our hope for the
future of Canadian families.
Eric W. Sager
Department of History, University of Victoria

Technical Note
Families Count: Profiling Canada’s Families IV relies,
in part, on data derived from the most recent Census
of Canada conducted by Statistics Canada in 2006.
As such, Statistics Canada’s definition of the census
family is the principal foundation on which many of
the statistical profiles presented here have been built.

Census Family:

Refers to a married couple (with or without children
of either or both spouses), a couple living common-law
(with or without children of either or both partners)
or a lone parent of any marital status, with at least one
child living in the same dwelling. A couple may be of
opposite or same sex. This excludes persons living in
collective households

Refers to a group of two or more persons who live
in the same dwelling and are related to each other by
blood, marriage, common-law or adoption. A couple
may be of opposite or same sex. For 2006, foster children are included.
The economic family includes all census families noted
above plus persons living with relatives other than their
spouses, common-law partners or children, e.g. two
sisters sharing a dwelling. Unattached individuals are
persons living alone or with unrelated persons.

Part I– Canada’s Families:
Who They Are
H
istory teaches us that family has never been
one thing to all people. That families have
changed and continue to change is now part
of conventional wisdom. The variety and diversity of
family forms found today speaks to the dynamic ways in
which families come together, come apart, and redefine
themselves across the life course. These patterns, in turn,
impact the ways in which we care and support each other.

Canadians, by and large, still choose to live in families.
Despite concerns about the disintegration of “family”, the great majority of Canadians live in couple
families, either married or common-law. There is no
doubt about the on-going importance that Canadians
attach to families. For almost everyone, according to
Reg Bibby, “the significance of families extends beyond
how they shape individuals and their personal relationships. Most Canadians believe firmly that families
are important foundations of our communities and,
indeed, of the nation as a whole.”
In the past, heterosexual marriage, birth or adoption
were the only ‘legitimate’ routes into family. Today,
these gateways include cohabitation, same-sex marriage and blended families. Understanding the “how,
when and why” of family structure and formation,
however, begs a much deeper analysis of family-life

practices over time. It is not enough to count the
number of marriages and divorces, the number of babies born in a given year or average family size. These
numbers are important, but on their own, they lack the
dimensions necessary for a more fulsome appreciation
of what it means to be a family.

Building a deeper understanding of the basic trends in
family composition demands consideration of a much
broader set of socio-demographic trends, such as:
population growth and ageing, rising rates of immigration, increasing cultural, racial and ethnic diversity,
rising rates of cohabitation and educational attainment,
declining rates of fertility, increased mobility and the
phenomenal advances in technology. These are the varied contexts and characteristics of family life in the 21st
century that merit our attention and understanding.
Our ability to understand the constantly shifting
dynamics and characteristics of family life is central to
our capacity as a nation to respond to the many opportunities and challenges facing families today. The data
and analysis presented in Families Count helps us build
this understanding by making the links between how
changes in family make-up and function, and in social,
economic and political contexts, impact individual
and collective health, well-being and prosperity.

n Canada Day 2008, there were 33.3 million
people living in Canada. The last time
Canada’s population count had three
identical digits was back in 1972 when the total
population was 22.2 million. And the time before that
was in 1937, when the population was 11.1 million.
One population projection forecasts that Canada will
reach the 44.4 million mark in another 30 years.6
Other, more modest growth scenarios suggest a
population in the range of 37 million to 41 million
by that time.
Based on detailed Census estimates for 2006, approximately 85% of Canadians (26.7 million people ) lived
in private households with someone to whom they are
related. Of this group, the vast majority (87%) lived
in “census families” (defined as husbands and wives or
common-law partners, with or without never-married
children, and lone-parent families with their nevermarried children). The remaining 13% of those living
in families (almost 3.4 million Canadians) lived with
other relatives or in multi-family households.7
In 2006, roughly one in ten Canadians (10.6%) lived
alone, while another 2.5% lived in private households
with non-relatives. Overall, there has been a steady
increase in the proportion of Canadians living in
one-person households. One person households, for
example, now outnumber households with five or
more members by a margin of three to one.

2

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And just under 2% of Canadians lived in collective
dwellings. For example, of those in collective dwellings, over half (56%) lived in special care facilities
(nursing homes, residences for senior citizens and
other chronic and long-term care facilities). Another
11% lived in facilities for persons with disabilities, and
4% resided in correctional and penal institutions.8

And so what?

In 1901, the Census recorded that close to nine in
ten Canadians lived in families – a figure surprisingly
close to today’s number. These records, however, don’t
tell the whole story. While statistical agencies strive to
determine, with increasing sophistication, who is living
where and with whom, they can never fully capture
“family.” Individuals living on their own are certainly
members of families – involved in the give and take
of family life. Others are forging families of choice –
creating bonds of care and affection with individuals
outside of their immediate kinship circle.
While the proportion of Canadians living alone may
be growing, the majority of Canadians, by and large,
still live in families. What is changing is how families
come together and the ways in which they care and
support each other. Family life has never been as
diverse or as dynamic. This report sets out to capture
this changing picture.

ver 360,000 babies were born in Canada in
2008. This is the largest number of babies
born in over a decade, and some 37,000
above the half-century low recorded in 2001. That
said, the current number of births is still about
one-quarter less than it was during the height of the
baby boom in 1959 when it stood at 479,000.
The TFR (total fertility rate) is an estimate of the
average number of live births a woman can be expected
to have during her lifetime. Statistically, 2.1 births
per woman is considered necessary to maintain current population levels through natural increase alone
(without immigration or emigration). This is referred
to as the replacement rate. The total fertility rate has
been below the replacement rate since 1972. In 2007,
the TFR was 1.7 children per woman. This represents a
small upturn in the number of births over recent years,
but remains well below the high point of the baby
boom (3.9 in 1959). National survey data reveal that
families are interested in having several children, at
least two or three, but often end up having fewer.9

In 2007, Canada’s TFR was the fourth lowest among
low birth rate countries, ahead of Spain (1.40), Greece
(1.41) and the Czech Republic (1.44).10
The actual number of births in part reflects the
number of women of childbearing age, which largely

4

|

reflects the number of women born some 25 to 35
years earlier. Past booms, busts and echoes continue to
impact the number of births.
Overall, fertility is both declining and “aging”. In
2007, the average age of mothers was 29.3 years. More
women are postponing birth into their thirties. In fact,
the year 2006 marked a significant change in the age
structure of fertility, as the fertility rate of women aged
30 to 34 exceeded that of women aged 25 to 29. If current trends continue, the fertility rate of women aged
35 to 39 could soon surpass women aged 20 to 24.11

And so what?

Populations grow through the birth of children and
through international immigration. Until the early
1990s, natural increase – the growth that results from
the difference between the number of births and the
number of deaths – was almost always the main source
of Canada’s population growth. International immigration is now the primary population growth engine,
accounting for two-thirds of growth in 2006.
Immigration will continue to drive population growth
in the near future.12 Indeed, if current patterns hold,
the number of deaths in Canada is likely to surpass
the number of births around 2030. From that point
forward, immigration will be the only source of population growth.13

anada has an aging population, a result of the
drop in fertility and the steady increase in life
expectancy. The age distribution of Canada’s
population no longer resembles a pyramid, but rather,
a diamond. The median age is now 38.8 years and will
surpass 45 years within less than three decades. Among
the provinces, Alberta has the youngest population,
while Newfoundland and Labrador has the oldest. The
median age of women is about two years older than
that of men, as women generally live longer.
During the 1950s and much of the 1960s, about onethird of the Canadian population was under 15 years
of age. These were the baby boom years, extending
from about 1947 to 1966. The latest estimates suggest
today’s children under 15 now represent 17% of the
total population or about one-half of what we saw at
the peak of the baby boom.
By contrast, the number of seniors is growing. During
the baby boom period, those aged 65 and over made
up less than 8% of the total population. This number
has now risen to over 13% and will reach 20% (one in
five) within two decades. Within ten years, the number of seniors aged 65 and over will outnumber youth
under 15 years of age.
According to medium growth population projections
by Statistics Canada, the core working age population
(persons aged 15 to 64 years) will increase at a slow
pace until the early 2020s and then actually decline as
baby boomers move into their senior years.14 During
the third quarter of the twentieth century, there were

6

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roughly eight adults aged 15 to 64 years for every
senior; this dependency ratio now stands at just five
working-age persons per senior and is forecast to fall to
only 2.2 persons by 2056.15

And so what?

The changing age structure has and will continue to
have a dramatic impact on society. The initial postwar boom brought about an increase in the demand
for maternity beds, then a soaring demand for more
elementary schools, then for secondary educational
institutions, and for jobs as these boomers made their
way into the labour market. This triggered increased
demand for homes, cars and consumer goods of all
kinds as this cohort started families of their own.
As the baby boom generation moves into retirement, attention is turning to the adequacy of income
programs for seniors, the availability of home care and
supported housing, and potential future demand on
the health care system. The spectre of labour shortages
looms large – especially in the health care field. These
shifts will impact the capacity of families to provide
care across generations.
Population policies aimed at boosting the birth rate
will have little impact on the situation as it currently
stands. Rather, attention will be focused on immigration to boost the labour force. As well, the baby
boom generation will feel increasing pressure to delay
retirement and/or blend part-time employment and
retirement income.

* Note â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The median age is the age at which half the population is younger and half is older. Source: Statistics Canada (2009), Demographic Estimates Compendium 2007, Catalogue no. 91-213-SCB.

n March 2010, on the eve of the Paralympic
Games in Vancouver, Canada ratified the UN
Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities. The Convention requires governments
across Canada to create a more accessible and inclusive
society that recognizes the rights of people with
disabilities to full inclusion, equality of opportunity,
and accessibility.

This important milestone comes at a time when the
prevalence of disability in Canada is rising. In 2006,
4.4 million Canadians living in private households reported having a health-related condition that limited
their everyday activities. This represents a disability
rate of 14.3%, an increase from 12.4% in 2001.16 This
figure does not include those with disabilities living
in institutions such as long-term care facilities.
As expected, the disability rate in Canada increases
steadily with age. Among children under 15, 3.7% are
living with a disability, with this rate rising to nearly
11.5% among adults aged 15 to 64 and to 43.4%
among persons aged 65 and over. More than one-half
(56.3%) of persons aged 75 and over reported having
an activity limitation. While boys aged 0 to 14 are
more likely to have activity limitations than girls (4.6%
compared to 2.7%), the prevalence of disability is
slightly higher among women after age 25.
In 2006, 1.7% of children under age five had one or
more disabilities. Seven in ten of this group (69.8%)
were reported as having a chronic health condition
such as asthma or Attention Deficit Disorder. Six
in ten (62.1%) had a developmental delay. Overall,
the disability rate for this age group did not change
substantially from 2001 to 2006, nor did their most
common types of disability.

8

|

The disability rate for children aged 5 to 14 increased
from 4.0% in 2001 to 4.6% in 2006. The increase in
learning disabilities (from 2.6% to 3.2% of school-aged
children) accounted for the largest part of the increase.
The number experiencing a chronic condition limiting daily activity, a psychological disability or speech
impairment also increased over this period. Of the
202,350 Canadian children aged 0 to 14 with disabilities, 58.3% reported having a “mild” to “moderate”
disability, while 41.7% reported having a “severe” to
“very severe” disability.17
Among the adult population aged 15 years or older, in
general, problems related to pain, mobility and agility
are the most common. Close to 3 million Canadian
adults (approximately 11% of the total adult population ) reported one of these three limitations. And
over one million adults have a hearing disability. Overall, the number of adults experiencing a disability is
increasing – across almost all disability types. In 2006,
16.5% of adults aged 15 and older reported a disability, an increase from 14.6% in 2001.
Among all adults reporting a disability in 2006
(4.2 million Canadians), just over one-third (35.4%)
reported a “mild” limitation, one-quarter reported a
“moderate” or a “severe” limitation (24.8% and 26.3%,
respectively), while 13.5% reported a “very severe”
limitation.

And so what?

The experience of disability is a common one for Canadians and their families. As the numbers of those with
mild to severe disabilities continues to grow, so too
does the need for supports and services that facilitate
the full participation of people with disabilities in the
social and economic lives of their communities.

Prevalence of disabilities by type of disability (2006 )
Type of disability

Children 0 to 4 years

Children 5 to 14 years

Adults 15 years of age or older

number

%

number

%

number

%

Hearing

3,270E

11.9E

20,020

11.5

1,266,120

5.0

Seeing

3,030E

11.0E

16,680

9.5

816,250

3.2

Speech

…

…

78,240

44.8

479,740

1.9

Mobility

…

…

23,160

13.2

2,923,000

11.5

Agility

…

…

37,240

21.3

2,819,580

11.1

Learning

…

…

121,080

69.3

631,030

2.5

Developmental

…

…

53,740

30.7

136,570

0.5

Psychological

…

…

60,310

34.5

589,470

2.3

Pain

…

…

…

…

2,965,650

11.7

Memory

…

…

…

…

495,990

2.0

Delay

17,090

62.1

…

…

…

…

Chronic Health Condition

19,230

69.8

116,340

66.6

…

…

Other

1,810

6.6

6,290

3.6

119,390

0.5

Total

27,540

E

E

174,810

4,215,530

Note: … not applicable; E use with caution. The sum of the categories is greater than the total disability population because individuals can report more than one disability.
Source: Statistics Canada (2007), Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, 2006: Analytical Report. Catalogue no. 89-628-XIE – No. 002.

here has been rapid population growth among
Aboriginal peoples.18 In 2006, nearly 1.2 million
people identified themselves as an Aboriginal
person, that is, North American Indian / First Nation,
Métis or Inuit.19 This is up from just under one million in
2001 and 800,000 in 1996. The growth over the last
decade is nearly six times faster than the growth of the
non-Aboriginal population over the same period (45%
compared to 8%). Aboriginal peoples now represent 3.8%
of the Canadian population. Of that group, 59.5% are
First Nation peoples, 33.2% are Métis, 4.3% are Inuit,
and 3.0% identify another Aboriginal heritage group.20
Statistics Canada projects that the Aboriginal population
may reach roughly 1.5 million by 2017 and comprise
4.1% of the total Canadian population. 21 While average
growth rates are expected to slow, they will remain well
above those projected for the Canadian population.
The Aboriginal population is much younger than the
rest of the population. In 2006, the median age (onehalf are younger and one-half are older) for all Aboriginal people was 27 years, compared to 40 years for
the non-Aboriginal population. The population aged
24 and under comprised almost one-half (48%) of the
Aboriginal population compared to less than one-third
(31%) of the non-Aboriginal population.
Given the current age profile, young Aboriginal adults
aged 20 to 29 years are forecast to comprise a larger
proportion of the population than at present – potentially
representing 5.3% of this age group by 2017. This ratio
may be as high as 30.3% in Saskatchewan, 23.5% in Manitoba, and even higher at 84.7% in Nunavut, 58.2% in the
Northwest Territories, and 39.8% in the Yukon Territory.22
Like the Canadian population as a whole, in 2006, the
large majority of Aboriginal people (85%) lived in families

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(comprised of married or common-law couple, with or
without never married children or lone-parents with
children). Fewer Aboriginal people lived alone (7.5%
compared to 10.5% for the total population), while
4.0% of Aboriginal people lived with other relatives.23
As the current population ages, we can expect rapid
growth in the number of Aboriginal households and
families. One important dimension of Aboriginal family demographics is the high proportion of lone-parent
families. Roughly one-third of Aboriginal children
(35%) live with a lone parent compared to 17% of
non-Aboriginal children. Another 7% live with a
grandparent or another relative, while 58% live with
two parents.

And so what?

A rapidly growing young Aboriginal population stands
in stark contrast to the aging of the general population in Canada and, as such, represents both a unique
challenge and an opportunity. Over the next decades,
there will be a massive influx of Aboriginal youth into
the working-age population. This fact, in particular,
highlights the critical importance of basic education
and access to post-secondary education and training.
There is still a very wide gap between Aboriginal young
people and other young Canadians in terms of educational attainment and employment and across a range
of other physical and mental health measures.
High rates of poverty continue to stymie the healthy
development of Aboriginal children and youth and
compound the difficulties among Aboriginal families and communities undergoing profound cultural,
environmental and economic change. Much needs to
be done to support and invest in Aboriginal youth as
they move into the labour market and begin to form
families of their own.

ore than 225,000 immigrants on average
have been admitted to Canada each year
since the early 1990s. In 2008, roughly
250,000 immigrants were admitted to Canada,
including those sponsored by a close relative residing
in Canada, those coming as economic immigrants with
their families, and those claiming refugee status.24 One
survey of recent immigrants found that almost all
(98%) had only one country (Canada) in mind when
they chose their new homeland.25

According to the 2006 Census, one in five (19.8%)
Canadian residents were born in another country; this
is the highest percentage since 1931. Among the major
industrial countries, only Australia (at 22%) has a
larger ratio of immigrants to total population. Between 2001 and 2006, Canada’s foreign born population increased by 13.6%, a rate four times higher than
the growth of the Canadian-born population.26
Among the provinces, Ontario (28.3%) and British
Columbia (27.5%) have the highest prevalence of immigrants to total population, whereas Newfoundland
and Labrador (1.7%) has the lowest. About one-half
(45.7%) of the population in the Toronto Census
Metropolitan Area is foreign-born, and 36.5% of the
population in the Vancouver region is foreign-born.
Between 2001 and 2006, the largest source of international immigration has been the People’s Republic of China
(14%), India (12%), the Philippines (7%) and Pakistan

12

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(5%). In 1981, the top four countries were the United
Kingdom, Viet Nam, the United States and India.
More often than not, people immigrate when they
are young adults. As such, in 2006, the median age of
those arriving was 29.8 years, nine years younger than
the median age of the overall population (38.8 years).

And so what?

Population projections suggest that the proportion of
foreign-born Canadians will continue to grow. Like population aging, this trend will have wide ranging ramifications. Whereas Canada has always been a “3M” society –
that is, multicultural, multi-linguistic, and multi-religious
– the make-up of the “3M” nature of the population has
shifted. Sustained levels of immigration from increasingly
diverse source countries is transforming communities,
neighbourhoods, schools, workplaces, and public institutions, especially in Canada’s largest cities.
Increasing diversity challenges us to rethink how we
understand families – how they operate and how we
collectively support them. No longer confined geographically, the ties of kinship are spread far and wide.
Children in new immigrant families navigate often
more than one culture and language. Their parents too
often navigate a hostile labour market in their efforts
to support their families here in Canada and family
members back home. Canada prides itself in being an
ethnically diverse society. Yet dealing with such diversity remains a work in progress.

igh levels of immigration have resulted in
growing racial and ethnic diversity in Canada.
In 2006, more than 200 different ethnic groups
– either singly or in combination – were identified by the
Census. This list includes Canada’s Aboriginal peoples,
the Europeans that first came to Canada, and those such
as the Ukrainians, East Indians and the Chinese who
came in large numbers over the past century.

Recent immigrants to Canada are not doing as well
economically as those who arrived years earlier. In
1980, recent immigrants – those who arrived in the
previous five years – had a poverty rate that was 1.4
times higher than the rate among Canadian-born; by
2000, the poverty rate was 2.5 times higher.30 Other
indicators show similar negative trends.

More recently, the largest single group of newcomers to Canada have come from Asia – fully 60% of all
immigrants between 2001 and 2006. Immigrants from
African countries are also making up a larger proportion of the new immigrant population – at 10.5% over
the 2001to 2006 period.27

As the home countries of new immigrants have shifted
from the United States and Europe towards Asia,
Africa and South America, Canadians are brought
face to face with greater diversity than ever before. The
growing visible minority population is challenging
governments and communities to identify and remove
barriers to equitable participation in social and economic life – particularly those barriers rooted in racial
discrimination.

As a result of these trends, Canada’s visible minority population has grown steadily, now comprising
16.2% of the Canadian population or over 5 million
people – a significant increase from 1.1 million people
in 1981.28 Given current patterns of immigration, by
2017, it is forecast that the visible minority population
will reach 7.1 million – or approximately one-fifth of
the Canadian population. About one-third of the visible minority population present in 2017 will be born
in Canada, and most of them will have at least one
immigrant parent.
According to the 2006 Census, 83.4% of the visible
minority population were first generation Canadians
(born outside of Canada), 14.1% were second generation Canadians (born in Canada with at least one parent born elsewhere), and 2.5% were third generation
Canadians (born in Canada as were their parents).29

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And so what?

The family has emerged as a key focus of debate and
discussion. Immigration has forced open the whole
question of what constitutes family and how it should
be defined within the context of immigration law. Religious and cultural practices governing family formation
and dissolution as well as child custody have come into
conflict with Canadian law and tradition – prompting
an important debate about the respective roles of government and religion with regard to the family.
Young people in Canada are at the forefront of these
discussions. The rising rate of intermarriage between
individuals from visible minority groups and non-visible minorities is arguably one of the most interesting
indicators of Canada’s changing family life.31

nglish and French are Canadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s two official
languages. English is the mother tongue
(language first learned and still understood) for
58.3% of Canadians and French is the mother tongue
for 22.3%.
According to the 2006 Census, about 17.4% of all
Canadians claim that they can conduct a conversation
in English and French, a slight increase from 2001.
For Anglophones, almost seven in 10 (68.9%) living
in Quebec are bilingual, while this is the case for 7.5%
of those living outside Quebec. For Francophones, the
rate of bilingualism is 35.8% in Quebec and 83.6% for
those living outside Quebec.32

The proportion of the Canadian population who
report neither French nor English as their mother
tongue (referred to as allophones) has grown since the
mid 1980s. In the 2006 Census, there were 6,293,000
allophones, an increase of 958,000, or 18%, since
2001. Of the 1.1 million immigrants who settled in
Canada between 2001 and 2006, 901,300 (80%)
were allophones.
In 2006, over one million people reported one of
the Chinese languages as their mother tongue; this
language group now comprises 3.3% of all mother
tongues and 16.4% of all non-official mother tongues.
The next four largest non-official mother tongues
were Italian (477,000), German (467,000), Punjabi
(383,000), and Spanish (362,000).33 According to the
2006 Census, about 156,000 persons reported Urdu as
their mother tongue, up by 80% from 2001.
With time, immigrants tend to adopt one of Canadaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
official languages as their home language. As such,

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|

whereas English is the mother tongue of 57.8% of
Canadians, 65.9% report that it is the language spoken
at home. French is spoken at home by 21.2% Canadians even though 22.1% identify it as their mother
tongue. English is the most common home language
in all provinces and territories except two. In Quebec,
the primary home language is French (81.1%). In
Nunavut, 55.1% speak a language other than English
or French, Inuktitut being the most common.
English is the primary language of work for 76.4% of
all workers and is the dominant workplace language in
all provinces and territories except Quebec where 82%
of all workers use French. Almost one-quarter of workers (23.7%) in New Brunswick speak French at work.

And so what?

Anglophones still make up the majority of the population. While the number of Anglophones continued to
increase between 2001 and 2006, their share of the
Canadian population dropped. The same is true
among Francophones. The decrease is largely attributable to the increase in the number of recent immigrants whose mother tongue is neither English nor
French. Indeed, since the 1960s, the majority of immigrants have had a mother tongue other than English or
French. Canadians reported more than 200 different
mother tongues on the 2006 Census.
Linguistic diversity has always been a defining feature
of Canada. Families and communities play an important role in language use and the preservation of
linguistic heritage. This diversity begs an important
public policy question: what is the appropriate role for
government in the support of official language acquisition and heritage language maintenance?

Mother tongue/language first learned and still understood - Percentage distribution based on single and multiple responses
English

58.3%

97.7%

93.7%

92.5%

65.1%

8.6%

69.8%

72.2%

85.9%

80.2%

71.8%

85.8%

77.7%

27.5%

French

22.3

0.4

4.4

3.9

33.0

80.1

4.4

4.2

1.8

2.1

1.6

4.1

2.5

1.4

Other*

19.4

1.9

1.9

3.6

1.9

11.3

25.8

23.6

12.3

17.7

26.6

10.1

19.8

71.1

Language most often spoken at home - Percentage distribution
English

65.9%

98.7%

96.9%

96.0%

68.7%

10.0%

80.3%

87.2%

94.1%

88.8%

82.0%

94.5%

89.6%

44.2%

French

21.2

0.1

2.0

1.9

29.4

81.1

2.4

1.7

0.4

0.6

0.4

1.8

1.1

0.7

Other*

12.9

1.2

1.1

2.1

1.9

8.9

17.3

11.1

5.5

10.6

17.6

3.7

9.3

55.1

Language most often used at work - Percentage distribution
English

76.4%

99.3%

98.5%

97.8%

72.9%

12.5%

95.7%

96.4%

98.2%

98.1%

95.4%

98.2%

97.0%

69.0%

French

20.2

0.3

1.7

1.4

23.7

82.0

1.4

1.1

0.3

0.3

0.2

0.9

0.7

0.4

Other*

3.4

0.4

0.1

0.8

3.4

4.5

2.9

2.5

1.5

1.6

4.4

0.9

2.3

30.6

Note: Other includes non-official languages and multiple responses such as English and French, English and other non-official languages, French and other non-official languages, or other combinations.
Source: Statistics Canada, 2006 Census of Population, Catalogue no. 97-555-XCB2006007, 97-555-XCB2006008 and 97-555-XCB2006032.

eligious attendance has fallen sharply over
the last two decades. According to the 2005
General Social Survey on Time Use, only
21% of Canadians aged 15 and up reported that they
attended a religious service at least once a week in
2005, down from 30% in 1985. Similarly, in 2005,
one-third (33.3%) never attended religious services, up
from 22% in 1985. The remaining 46% attended a few
times a year.34

However, declining attendance may overstate the
extent to which Canada is becoming secularized, since
a considerable proportion of Canadians do not attend
religious services but do engage in religious practices
on their own. Over one-half of Canadians (53%)
reported that they engaged in religious activities on
their own at least monthly, while about 11% did so a
few times a year.35
Some 44% of Canadians say that religion is very important to them. This suggests that while attendance
rates have declined, many Canadians continue to practice their religion in private. This was particularly true
among older age groups and among immigrants.36
Clark and Schellenberg have developed an index
of religiosity that assesses participation in religious
services, personal religious practice, and the degree of
importance attached to religion. Using this measure,

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the authors found that 29% of Canadians are highly
religious, 31% are moderately religious, and 40%
have a low degree of religiosity. Further, religiosity is
strongly and positively associated with the religious
background of parents – a finding supported in the
literature.37

And so what?

Regardless of the downward trends in religious attendance rates, Canadians still attach a moderate or high
degree of importance to religion in their lives. How
religion is experienced and practiced, however, varies
widely. For instance, interreligious conjugal unions
have risen: in 2001, 19% of people in couples were in
an interreligious union, an increase of four percentage points from 1981.38 Greater religious diversity
is changing the context in which Canadians come
together and form families.
Greater religious diversity is also propelling new thinking about multiculturalism – and its connection to a
range of public policies such as employment, immigration, health and international relations. While much of
the debate has centered on what constitutes “reasonable accommodation” of religious principles, it is clear
that continuing dialogue fosters vibrant and inclusive
multicultural communities based on Canada’s longstanding respect for the rights of the individual.39

Infrequent public and private practice
(infrequently or never attends religious
services or does religious practices on their own)

17%

21%

Regular private practice only (infrequently
or never attends religious services but does
religious practices on their own at least once a month)

21%

4%

Regular public practice only (attends religious
services at least once a monty, but does religious
practice on their own infrequently or never)

32%
4%

32%

Regular public and private practice (attends
religious services and does religious practices
on their own at least once a month)
Source: Statistics Canada, Ethnic Diversity Survey, 2002.
Warren Clark and Grant Schellenberg (2006), Who’s Religious? Canadian Social Trends, May 2006. Catalogue No. 11-008.

Percentage distribution of population by religious affiliation, by Province/Territory (2001)
CAN

esearch clearly demonstrates that learning and
training are critical to individual and family
well-being. Shifting workforce demographics,
rapid advancements in technology and increasing
global competition are transforming not only our
society, but our understanding of the nature and
purpose of learning and education.
Levels of educational attainment have been increasing
steadily in Canada. According to the 2006 Census, the
percentage of the core working-age (25 to 64 years)
population with university credentials jumped from
about 11.5% in 1986 to 22.6% currently. And those
with less than high school graduation dipped from
47.8% in 1986 to 23.8%.40

Canada leads advanced industrial countries with
regard to postsecondary attainment among the working age population. Among the top 10 major OECD
industrial countries, Canada ranks sixth in terms of
the proportion of the population that has a university
degree and ranks first if both university degrees and
college degrees or certificates are included. Roughly
one-half of Canadians aged 25 to 64 years (48%) have
either a college or university education. 41
These trends have been driven by the increase in
educational attainment among young people. Census
data show that one-third (33.4%) of young adults
between the ages of 25 and 34 had a university certificate, degree or diploma in 2006 compared to roughly
one-quarter of adults (23.9%) aged 55 to 64 years. By

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contrast, only 10.9% of those aged 25 to 34 years have
not graduated from high school compared to about
22.9% of the population aged 55 to 64 years.
In 2006, one-third of women aged 25 to 34 years had
a university degree compared to one-quarter of men of
the same age. Among those aged 55 to 64 years, only
16% of women had a university degree compared to
21% of men.42

And so what?

Canadian young people have been going to postsecondary institutions in greater numbers since the
recession of the early 1990s. Even through the boom
years of the 2000s, young people pursued higher
education as a means to future economic security.
As a result, Canada has one of the most skilled
workforces in the world.
This shift has profoundly shaped the life course of
these young people. They are devoting more years
to education and, as a result, are leaving home later,
forming unions later, and having children later (or
not at all). The pursuit of higher education is also
changing who we marry, when and how we will raise
our children, and with what resources. It has fundamentally affected gender roles in the home and in the
workplace, informing the aspirations and world view
of men and women alike. Of the many socio-demographic trends influencing Canadian families today,
the drive for postsecondary credentials is one of the
most profound.

ne hundred years ago, the majority of
Canadians lived on farms and in small towns.
Today, most of us live in and around large
cities. In 2006, 80% of Canadians lived in urban areas.43

About two-thirds of Canadians reside in Census
Metropolitan Areas such as the Greater Toronto Area
or the Halifax Regional Municipality – large urban
areas comprised of one or more municipalities around
a central urban core of 100,000 or more. Another 15%
live in smaller urban areas with a population of at least
1,000 people. The remaining 20% of Canadians live in
smaller towns and villages and rural areas.
Population growth has been concentrated primarily in
Canada’s largest urban areas. But people are also choosing to settle in areas that are located within commuting
distances from urban employment centres. Some 35%
of rural workers now commute to large urban centres – a significant shift from the past.44 There is also
evidence that central urban areas are losing population
to peripheral municipalities.
International immigration has been the most important factor driving population growth in Canada’s
three largest urban areas: Montreal, Toronto and
Vancouver. It has opened up a gap between these
three areas and the rest of the country in terms of
ethno-racial diversity. These three CMAs now have a
combined population of 11.5 million or over one-third
of the total population of Canada. Internal migration
is fuelling population growth in other urban areas such
as Calgary and in rural areas strongly influenced by
adjacent urban areas.

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By contrast, demographic growth has been significantly lower in rural areas, particularly remote communities – despite the fact that these areas experience
higher average fertility rates.45 The propensity of
young adults from rural areas to move to the largest urban centres, along with the inverse trend among older
adults, has affected the age structures of urban and
rural areas. Consequently, the proportion of seniors is
lower in the largest CMAs than in most other types of
cities or communities – while it is considerably higher
in rural areas.

And so what?

The changing urban/rural character of Canada is
important to understanding patterns of settlement and
the dynamics of family life. There are now marked differences in family composition not only between large
urban areas and rural areas, but also between high density central neighbourhoods and low density suburban
areas. For example, young families with children seeking affordable housing have settled now for decades in
the suburbs – driving long distances to access services
and employment. According to the 2006 Census, the
median distance travelled by Canadian workers to get
to work has been increasing, from 7.0 kilometres in
1996 to 7.6 kilometres in 2006.46
In recent decades, low income families have been
concentrated in large urban areas, close to city centres.
But this is changing as poor families in some Canadian
cities have been driven out of city centres by rising
housing costs. Pockets of poverty are now evident in
the inner suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver – a pattern well established in the United States.47

f you don’t live in the same residence as you did
five years ago, you are not alone. About four out of
every ten people aged five and over (40.9%)
moved during the 2001-2006 period. Over one-half of
those who did move (53.8%), did so within their own
municipality, while 29.5% moved to another
municipality in the same province. Some 7.1% of
migrants moved to a different province and 9.6%
(3.9% of the total population aged 5 and over) were
living in another country five years earlier.48

Among the provinces and territories, in 2006, the
Northwest Territories, Alberta and British Columbia
had the highest proportion of movers,49 at 49.8%,
47.8% and 46.6%, respectively. Nine in ten of those
who changed address in Quebec moved from elsewhere in the province. In contrast, only three-quarters
of Albertans who moved came from elsewhere in the
province, as many moved from other parts of Canada.
Overall, however, there has been a decrease in mobility
among Canadians. While the proportion that moved
between 2001 and 2006 was roughly comparable to
the proportion that moved between 1996 and 2001
period (40.9% compared to 41.9%), these levels were
the lowest since 1971.
Population aging is partly responsible for this downward trend. Migration is much more common among
younger people – a shrinking proportion of the overall population.50 In 2006, the most mobile were aged

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25 to 29 years – 73% moved at some point between
2001 and 2006 – followed closely by those aged 30 to
34 years at 70%.
The benefits of migration can be significant. One Statistics Canada study found a significant association between interprovincial mobility and often large changes
in individuals’ earnings. Over a three year period, the
average earnings of “movers” grew twice as fast as those
who did not move. The earnings of men improved much
more than did the earnings of women, as women were
more likely to move in support of their spouses’ career
even if it meant a decline in their own earnings.51
We also find that mobility is higher among those who
are divorced, separated or widowed compared to those
who are married or in common-law relationships.
Aboriginal people and recent immigrants also tend to
be more mobile overall. Having children, by contrast,
reduces the probability of migrating from one community to another.52

And so what?

The probability of migrating is closely associated with
the events taking place in the lives of individuals.
People move to go to school, to look for better jobs, to
establish new relationships or to leave old ones, to provide better opportunities for children, to move closer
to family, and for a host of other reasons. The impacts
of relocation are experienced by families, the communities they enter, and those they leave behind.

ore than eight in ten Canadians live in
families – a proportion that has been fairly
constant over the past two decades. And
most live in couple families, again a proportion that has
remained steady over this time. In 2006, 84.1% of all
families were couple families, married or common-law.

in 2006 compared to 11% in 1981), reflecting the
long-term increase in lone-parent families over the
past three decades. However, there was little change
between 2001 and 2006.55 The majority of lone-parent
families are still headed by mothers (at 80.1%) but the
proportion headed by lone-fathers is growing.

What has been changing steadily is the type and size
of Canadian families. Fifty years ago, the majority of
families were comprised of a legally married husband
and wife and at least one child. According to the 2006
Census, this family is still the most numerous but it is
no longer the majority.

Among the provinces, over one-quarter (28.8%) of all
families in Quebec were common-law-couple families,
slightly over one-half of whom had children at home.
Ontario had the smallest proportion of common-lawcouple families in 2006 at 10.3%.

In the 1981 Census, 55% of all census families were
married-couple families with children. This proportion
slipped below the 50% mark in 1991 and dropped to
38.7% of all families in 2006. This group of families is
now less than the majority in all provinces and territories. Another 29.9% of all families are married-couple
families with no children living at home – a group that
has been growing in size as the population ages.53
The fastest growth, however, has been among commonlaw families, up from 5.6% of all families in 1981 to
15.5% in 2006. The proportion of census families who
are common-law couples without children doubled
during this period while the proportion with children
more than tripled.54
The proportion of lone-parent families was also higher
in 2006 than in 1981 (15.9% of all census families

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The number of couple families includes both oppositesex and same-sex couples. According to the 2006 Census, of the 45,300 same-sex couples that were recorded,
16.5% were married. Overall, same-sex couples make
up 0.6% of all couple families.

And so what?

There is no question that families have changed dramatically in the last fifty years. According to a 2007
Ipsos-Reid survey, a majority of Canadians agreed that
“there is no such thing as a typical family.”56 Today’s
families are populated by step-siblings and parents, by
same-sex parents, by children, parents, and other relatives – and increasingly, by couples alone.
These fundamental changes in the structure of families
compel us to rethink how best to respect and support
families in all of their diversity – at every level from
policy to programs.

n 2006, there were about 8.9 million families of
two or more persons in Canada. This represents an
increase of about 80% from 1971 when the
Census recorded 5 million families living in Canada.
Family growth was fairly rapid over this period, as the
baby-boom generation came of age and started families
of their own.
More recently, the growth in the number of families
has slowed. Between 2001 and 2006, for example,
the number of families grew by a more modest 6.3%.
Looking out to 2026, the rate of growth is expected to
slow further as families age, reflecting existing trends
in fertility, mortality and immigration.57

Over the next two decades, according to a mediumgrowth scenario, the number of families is forecast to
grow by only 15% between 2005 and 2026, reaching
a total of 9.7 million families in 2026. An alternative
scenario would see 10.7 million families by 2026.
These projections also hold that the ‘typical’ family will
be much older. Families with a primary maintainer aged
65 years and over will jump from 17% of all families
in 2005 to 30% in 2026.58 The next largest group will
comprise those aged 55 to 64 years. Together, these two
groups will make up one-half of all families, a significantly larger share than in 2005 (34%) or in 1986 (28%).

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By 2026, the number of families aged 15 to 24, 25 to
34 and 35 to 44 years will all have fallen below their
2005 levels. The biggest decline will be in number of
families headed by 15 to 24 year-olds – forecasted to
plummet by over two-thirds. The number of families
headed by someone in their prime child bearing years
(25 to 34 years) is expected to decline by 22% over
this same period.
According to these projections, families will continue
to represent a shrinking percentage of all households.
Families comprised 73% of all households in 1986.
This ratio was roughly 70% in 2005 and is forecast to
fall to 62% by 2026. This suggests that more people
will be living without a spouse or child at home.

And so what?

The reality is that no one can provide a definitive
view of the future, especially out to 2026. Nevertheless, it is essential to understand the general direction
of change, and it is likely that significant changes in
the rates of family formation and age structure will
occur in the near future. These changes will have far
reaching economic and social consequences, from
housing requirements and living arrangements, to
consumer preferences and changing public service
requirements.

lmost one hundred years ago, in 1921, the
average family was comprised of 4.3 people. In
most cases, this was made up of two adults
and an average of 2.3 children. Throughout the 20th
century, average family size continued to decline,
reaching 3.7 persons in 1971, and then 3.1 persons by
the mid 1980s – where it remains today.
The change since 1971 largely reflects the increase in
the number of two-person families and the sharp decline in families of five or more. In 1971, about one-inthree families were made up of two people (31%) and
another one-quarter were comprised of five or more
(27%). Since then, the number of families with only
two people has climbed to 44% of the total. In sharp
contrast, the share of families with five or more people
slumped to only 13%.59 The percentage of families
comprised of either three or four people has remained
at roughly one-in-five during the entire period.

30

1.9 children in married-couple families and 1.7 children in common-law-couple families.
Overall, average household size in Canada has been
falling, as well. In 2006, average household size was
2.5 persons, a reflection of the increase in the number
of one-person households and couples living without
children in the home. The number of one-person
households, for example, increased by 11.8% between
2001 and 2006, while the number of couples without
children grew by 11.2%.60 Indeed, as of 2006, among
all households, the proportion of couples without children was larger than the proportion of couples with
children for the first time.61

And so what?

The average family size of 3.1 is almost the same in
each of the provinces and territories with one exception. Average family size in Nunavut is 4.4 persons. In
Nunavut, about 42% of all families are comprised of
five or more people.

Smaller family size has spread available family resources
among fewer people. This is particularly relevant in the
context of caregiving and population aging. Caring
responsibilities are now carried by fewer family members, a situation complicated by the fact that extended
families often live at a great distance from each other.
In 2007, for example, one fifth of the population aged
45 and over who provided care to a parent lived more
than an hour away from the parent in need.62

That average family size has been on a downward track
for several decades is partly a reflection of the declining fertility rate and of population aging. As well, a
growing percentage of families are headed by a lone
parent – these families tend to be smaller than couple
families. In 2006, for example, female lone-parent
families had an average of 1.5 children compared to

Smaller families and households are driving changes –
both positive and negative – in everything from housing to
transportation to the demand for all manner of goods and
services. Just as growing diversity in family form requires
new thinking, the trend towards smaller families will also
have significant implications for the ways in which society organizes to care and provide for people of all ages.

he clear majority of Canadians choose to live
in families, albeit smaller families on average.
But the form those families are taking
continues to change. And the ways in which people
come together to form families – at different points in
their lives – is changing, reflecting shifts in cultural,
political and economic attitudes about partnering.
In 2006, almost six in ten Canadians aged 15 and older
(58.4%) lived in a conjugal union or “couple family.”63
Of this group, the majority were legally married – over
80% – while the rest were in common-law relationships.64
In total, just under one-half of all adults (47.9%) were
married in 2006.65 The highest proportion of married individuals was in Newfoundland and Labrador
(54.3%). In Quebec, only 37.5% of the adult population reported being married on the 2006 Census; this
percentage is even lower in Nunavut (31.0%) and in
the Northwest Territories (36.3%).
One in five adults in Quebec (19.4%) reported being in common-law relationships in 2006 – a higher
percentage than in any other province or territory,
with the exception of Nunavut (22.8%). Common-law
couples represented one-third of all couples in Quebec, a much higher share than in the other provinces
and territories (13.4%).
In 2006, 8.0% of Canadians aged 15 and up reported
being divorced. This was comprised of the 5.6% who
were legally divorced and who were not part of a new
couple and another 2.4% who were divorced but currently living in a common-law relationship.66 Three

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percent reported being separated (but still legally married) and 6.2% reported being a widow or widower on
Census day 2006.
In 2006, 41.6% of the population aged 15 and up
were single, meaning they were not currently living in
a conjugal union. One-third of the singles population
had previously been part of a couple, but reported being
either divorced or separated (19%) or widowed (14%) at
the time of the Census. The majority of the singles population (66%) had never before been legally married.
Overall, we see a downward trend in the proportion
of the married population over past decades and an
increase in the proportion of those who are divorced
and those who have never married. Common-law
unions are also much more common than in the past,
especially among young adults aged 25 to 29 years and
increasingly among those in their forties and over.

And so what?

Robert Glossop makes the point that “statistics make
family life neat because of the pre-packaged categories
into which people must fit themselves when they fill
out the questionnaires and because those who do not
fit simply do not appear.”67 But family life is not neat.
And marriage is not the only way in which people
come together to form and sustain families. In evaluating family trends and survey data on Canadian families, Robert Brym makes a similar observation: “The
family is not a crumbling institution. What is happening, however, is that people are freer than they once
were to establish the kinds of family arrangements that
best suit them.”68

lmost everybody is truly single at the age of
15. A “single” person is defined as someone
who has never been legally married and is not
currently in a common-law relationship. By the time
individuals are 25 to 29 years-old, singles have become
the minority (48.8% of this age group are single).
During their early 30s, about one-in-four people are
single, and by the age of 55 and beyond, fewer than
one in ten are single.69

Common-law relationships are the most common
unions among young people. When people are in their
early 20s, those in common-law relationships are twice
as numerous (12.3%) as those who are legally married
(6.0%). By the age of 25 to 29 years, the situation is already reversed: the proportion of those who are legally
married is now greater than those living in commonlaw unions – 27.0% compared to 21.8%.
Among those aged 60 to 64 years, two-thirds (67.7%)
are legally married and 6.2% are living common law,
for a total of 73.9% living in couple families. About
one in five (19.8%) are separated, divorced or widowed
and not in a common-law relationship, and the rest
(6.2%) are single and have never been married. That
said, living as part of a common-law couple is growing
rapidly, especially among older age groups.70
Among those who are in a common-law relationship,
almost all of those aged 20 to 24 years have not been
legally married before. After age 50, however, a grow-

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ing percentage of people in common-law relationships
report being previously married. For those aged 65
and over, about eight in ten common-law partners
are divorced.
As one would expect, widowhood increases with age.
At age 50 to 54 years, about 2.3% of all individuals
are widowed, rising to 7.4% by age 60 to 64 years, and
to 30% for those aged 65 and over. This ratio is much
higher for women than for men. Indeed, by their
mid-to-late fifties, more women than men are living
alone. This gap increases throughout the senior years.
By age 80, according to the 2006 Census, more than
one-half of women lived alone compared to less than
one-quarter of men.

And so what?

The proportion of married Canadians has been falling over
time. But that isn’t to say that marriage is necessarily losing
its appeal – or that Canadians are not interested in forming
families. Over time, most people will enter into a conjugal
relationship and a majority will marry at some point.
Surveys now show, however, that many Canadians are
choosing to cohabit at different points in their lives,
and for a variety of reasons. The rise in cohabitation
has been particularly notable among young people,
and increasingly among those who have been married and divorced. For some, cohabitation serves as a
precursor to marriage, while for others, an alternative
to a legal marriage.

nother way to look at the underlying changes in
family formation is to track the â&#x20AC;&#x153;total first
marriage rate.â&#x20AC;? This rate refers to the
proportion of people who could be expected to marry
before the age of 50. In 1981, about 65% of both men
and women could expect to marry at least once by the
age of 50. This rate declined in the early 1980s, flattened
for the next five years and then fell sharply again after
1990. By 2004, only 46% of women and even fewer men
(44%) could be expected to marry by age 50.
The total first marriage rate is the lowest in Quebec
and the territories. In 2004, less than one-third of men
and women in Quebec and the territories could expect
to marry by age 50. In sharp contrast, over 70% of
those living in Prince Edward Island could expect to
marry by age 50.
Age-specific rates of marriage fell sharply between
2000 and 2004, the most recent years for which we
have data. In the year 2000, about 75 out of every
1,000 women aged 25 to 29 years got married in that
year. By 2004, this rate had fallen to only 54 out of
every 1,000 women, or by almost one-quarter. The
rate of decline was similar for women under age 25.
Women between the ages of 30 and 55 years experienced a decline of at least 10% in their rate of marriage
over this period. The only group to experience a slight
increase in the rate of marriage was among women
aged 75 years and older.71
Not all marriages are first marriages. Among the
147,400 marriages that took place in 2003, about twothirds (66.2%) were first marriages for both spouses,
while one in five (18.4%) involved one spouse who had

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been previously married, and one in six (15.5%) involved two spouses who had been previously married.72
The decline in the number of marriages is being driven
by the decline in first-time marriages; whereas the
total number of marriages dropped by 23% between
1981 and 2003, the decline in first time marriages was
even greater at 28%. The number of remarriages has
remained within a narrow range of 35,000 to 37,000
per year over this period. The only exception for remarriages was during a short period following changes to
the Divorce Act in 1985, when remarriages jumped
into the 42,000 to 44,000 range.
Overall, in 2004, the crude marriage rate was less than
half of the highest recorded rate of 1946, the first year
of the baby boom (4.6 marriages per 1,000 population
in 2004 compared to 11.2 marriages in 1946).73

And so what?

Among older generations, marriage was the norm. This is no
longer the case. About 88% of all females born in 1948 were
legally married by the time they turned 30. Among women
born in 1970, 55% were legally married by the time they
turned 30. Many more individuals are living in commonlaw relationships while others are simply living alone.
Most of us still choose to live in partnership, seeking
meaning by living our lives with and for others. Our
conjugal unions fulfill a central organizing function,
and whereas marriage used to represent the only legitimate means of forming and maintaining a family, it is
no longer an accurate marker of lifelong commitment.
Marriage and family, institutions once thought to be
joined at the hip, are increasingly separate and distinct.

n Canada, the average age of first marriage has
been climbing for over three decades. In 2004, the
typical first-time groom was 30.5 years-old – an
increase of over five years from 1970 when it was at a
record low. Similarly, the average age of first-time
brides has increased, reaching 28.5 years in 2004, up
from the low of 22.6 years set in the 1960s.

Age of first marriage has been linked to the probability of marriage dissolution. “Someone marrying
in their teens faces a risk of marriage dissolution
almost two times higher than a person who marries
between the ages of 25 and 29. In contrast, people
who wait until their mid-30s or later to marry run a
risk 43% lower.”74

The other notable trend is that the age gap between men
and women has narrowed. During the first half of the
century, the average first-time groom was 3.5 years older
than the average first-time bride. The age difference fell
to roughly three years during the 1950s and 1960s, and
subsequently narrowed to two years during the 1990s.

And so what?

The average age for all marriages (first and subsequent
marriages) follows a similar pattern. In 2004, it was
32.4 years for women and 34.9 for men. Among divorced women, the average age of remarriage was 42.9
years while it was 46.1 years for divorced men. The
average age of remarriage among widows and widowers
was 56.9 years and 63.1 years, respectively.
According to the Vital Statistics Database, men and
women in same-sex marriages tend to be older when
they marry, on average, than those involved in opposite-sex marriages. In 2004, the average age of marriage
among men in same-sex marriages was 42.7 years and
42.1 years among women.
Among all those who married in 2004, the oldest
grooms and brides were in the Yukon. The youngest
brides and grooms were in Saskatchewan.

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Of the many trends influencing families in Canada,
the delay of marriage has been one of the most important. For young people today, the transition to adulthood and economic independence is occurring over a
longer period of time. Many in this group are delaying
marriage as they complete educational credentials, pay
down educational debt, and establish themselves in
the labour market. Young people are also much more
likely to choose to cohabit as a substitute for or precursor to marriage. Many younger adults in commonlaw unions will go onto marry at a later age.
The trend in marriage and cohabitation marks a
profound shift in young people’s thinking about
independence, life course, and the meaning of family. It is important to note that young people aren’t
necessarily delaying forming relationships; they are
choosing different routes to commitment, and some
are foregoing established tradition. For others, high
rates of unemployment and low wage employment is
a significant barrier to setting up independent households – as it was in the past.

n 2005, Canada became the third country in the
world to legalize same-sex marriage, after the
Netherlands (2000) and Belgium (2003).75 This
decision opened the door for Canadians, regardless of
sexual orientation, to enter into legal marriage, thereby
increasing the diversity of legally recognized family
forms in Canada.

Fewer than one in ten (9.0%) same-sex couples had
children under 25 years living at home, although this
was much more common for women in same-sex
unions (16.8%) than for men (2.9%). Living with children was also more common among married same-sex
couples than among those living common law (16.2%
compared to 7.5%).

While 2006 marked the first year that the Census
enumerated same-sex married couples, 2001 was the
first year that the Census collected information about
same-sex couples. The overall counts of same-sex couples
are not large but growth has been notable. The reported
number of same-sex couples grew by one-third (32.6%)
between 2001 and 2006, from 34,200 to 45,345, five
times faster than the growth in opposite-sex couples
(5.9%).76 The growth in the number of same-sex couples
may in part reflect an emerging social acceptance of
same-sex unions and a greater ease and willingness
among same-sex couples to self-identify in the Census.

And so what?

About 7,500 or 16.5% of all reported same-sex couples
were legally married in Canada. The highest percentage of legally married same-sex couples was in Ontario (21.5%) and British Columbia (19.5%)77 while
the lowest was in Quebec (9.2%). The lower rate in
Quebec may reflect the preference for common-law
unions in that province. More than one-half of samesex married couples were male (53.7%). Overall, there
were 146,200 marriages in Canada in 2004, roughly
1,400 of which (approximately 1%) were marriages of
same-sex couples.78

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It has been five years since the legal right for same
sex couples to marry was established. It has been a
controversial and contested issue within Canadian
society, but opinion polls suggest the majority of
Canadians support it. In a 2009 Angus Reid Public
Opinion poll, six-in-ten Canadians surveyed (61%)
agreed with the statement that “same-sex couples
should continue to be allowed to legally marry.”79
An additional 23% said same-sex couples should be
allowed to form civil unions, but not marry. About
one-in ten (11%) said same-sex couples should not
have any kind of recognition, and the remaining 4%
were “not sure.” The same poll found the 73% of
younger adults (aged 18 to 34 years) supported legal
marriage for same-sex couples, with 7% opposed.
Further, three-quarters of Canadians support the view
that all people should be afforded equal rights, regardless of sexual orientation, and enjoy protection from
discrimination as guaranteed in the Canadian Charter
of Rights and Freedoms.80

ccording to the 2006 Census, 2.8 million
people aged 15 and older were common-law
partners, 10.8% of Canada’s adult population.
Their share of the population has grown by seven
percentage points since 1981. Common-law-couple
families now make up 15.4% of all census families, a
proportion that has more than doubled over the past
two decades.
Young people in particular are opting to form
common-law unions. It is estimated that over onehalf of women aged 20 to 29 years (53%) and four
in ten women aged 30 to 39 years (42%) will choose
a common-law union as their first union.81 A 2009
survey of young people aged 15 to 19 years found that
over three-quarters approved of cohabitation, and at
least one-third stated explicitly that they planned to
live with someone at some point.82

The preference for common-law partnership is especially
notable in Quebec. The appeal of marriage as a way of
forming a first union or family seems to have declined
most markedly in this province. “Among those ranging
in age from 30 to 39, barely 26% of Quebec women are
expected to choose marriage as a way to start their conjugal lives, compared with 59% of women in the other
provinces. Conversely, among women in the same age
group, it is estimated that 70% of Quebec women will
start their conjugal life through a common-law relationship, compared with 34% elsewhere in Canada.”83
By and large, Canadians view cohabitation as a prelude
or complement to marriage rather than a substitute for
it. Most of those forming families through a common-

42

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law relationship eventually marry. For example, while
42% of women aged 30 to 39 years in 2001 reported
being likely to choose a common-law relationship as
their first union, 80% estimated they would get married at a later point.
Among older Canadians, common-law unions generally come after the dissolution of a first marriage. The
probability of women aged 50 to 59 years experiencing a common-law union as their first union is only
8%. However, 19% of this group is expected to form a
common-law union at some later point. Among older
women, common-law unions are serving as a prelude
or substitute for remarriage.84

And so what?

The growing numbers of common-law unions suggest that many Canadians will live in different types
of conjugal unions at different points of their lives.
These trends raise important questions for family law.
Do couples who cohabit have the same obligations
and responsibilities to each other as married couples?
When common-law unions dissolve, should the same
principles and regulations regarding division of property and assets apply? What if children are involved?
In all provinces except Quebec, the tendency in law
has been to treat common-law unions in a similar fashion to married unions, usually following a minimum
duration of the common-law union. In Quebec, on the
other hand, common-law unions carry different rights
and responsibilities than marriage, reflecting the prevalent view among many Quebeckers that common-law
is a distinct alternative to marriage.85

n 2004, there were 69,600 divorces in Canada,
down 1.7% from the previous year, and down 28%
from 1987 – following the passage of the 1985
Divorce Act.86 The crude divorce rate was 21.8 per
10,000 persons in 2004, again significantly lower than
the 1987 level of 36.4 divorces per 10,000 persons.87
The total divorce rate is a measure that predicts the
proportion of couples that can be expected to divorce
before their 30th wedding anniversary, based on
current patterns of divorce. According to Statistics
Canada, 37.9% of all marriages taking place in 2004
will have ended in divorce by 2035 if “durationspecific divorce rates calculated for 2004 remain
stable.” The total divorce rate is down from its peak
in the mid 1980s, but slightly higher than the rate
recorded in the mid 1990s.88
In 2005, the average duration of a marriage preceding divorce was 14.5 years. The average age at divorce
in 2005 was 44.0 for men and 41.2 years for women.
Looking at the total number of divorces by the
duration of marriage, the largest number of divorces
occurred among those who had been married three
(4,219) or four (4,034) years. The likelihood of divorce
declines each year after the fourth year of marriage.
In 2004, the highest total divorce rates in Canada were
in Quebec and Western Canada. In Quebec, 48.4% of
married couples were forecast to divorce before reaching their 30th wedding anniversary, based on divorce
patterns of the recent past. More than four out of every
ten marriages in Alberta and British Columbia were

44

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expected to end in divorce before the 30th anniversary.
By contrast, Newfoundland and Labrador had the lowest total divorce rate at 21.6%.
This discussion of divorce is based only on the dissolution of legal marriages and not common-law unions.
According to the 2006 General Social Survey, a similar
number of people ended marriages as did those that
ended common-law unions over the 2001 to 2006 period. Given that there are considerably more marriages,
these data show that the risk of break-up of commonlaw unions is much higher than the risk of divorce.89
Common-law relationships, however, are somewhat
more stable in Quebec than in the rest of Canada, and
where children are born to the union.
Overall, the risk of union dissolution has grown.
Data from the 2001 General Social Survey show that
women (and men) ranging in age from 30 to 39 years
are expected to be twice as likely as older women aged
60 to 69 years to see their first unions end in separation or divorce, a reflection in part of the preference
for common-law unions among young people.90

And so what?

Every story of separation and divorce is deeply textured by the unique circumstances and events within
and surrounding the lives of the individuals involved.
The complex range of emotions and transitions
involved in the dissolution of unions presents many
challenges for families and for the policies and programs designed to support them over the life course.

s the probability of breaking up among
Canadian couples has grown, so too has the
probability of entering into a second or third
union. One Statistics Canada study estimates that
three times as many women ranging in age from 30 to
39 years will experience a second union compared to
women in their 60s. Similarly, twice as many women
aged 50 to 59 years will repartner compared to women
in their 60s.91

As the following table shows, the majority of Canadians
do go on to repartner after a divorce or separation. For
example, about 26% of women and 37% of men enter
into a new conjugal relationship within three years of
marital dissolution. After five years, these proportions rise
to 36% of women and 51% of men. After 20 years, 69%
of women and 82% of men have formed new unions.
Of those entering second unions, many are choosing
a common-law union. This is particularly so among
younger adults. For example, in 2001, women aged 30 to
39 years whose first union was a marriage were twice as
likely to choose a common-law relationship as opposed
to a marriage for their second union. Women in this
age group whose first union was a common-law union
were 14 times as likely to follow this same path again.
This is consistent with survey data that suggest
divorced people today are less likely to report an
intent to remarry than in the past. In 1990, just under

46

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one-half (49%) of divorced Canadians stated that they
did not intend to marry again; this rose to two-thirds
(62%) by 2006. Women were more likely than men to
state that they did not want to remarry. And increasingly, divorced individuals with children are choosing
not to remarry.92
With the growing popularity of cohabitation, the rate
of remarriage has remained relatively flat over many
years. The number of remarriages has remained within
a narrow range of 35,000 to 37,000 per year over the
past 25 years. Of those who had ever-married, about
10% had married twice, and less than 1% had married
three or four times. 93

And so what?

The decision to form and/or dissolve a conjugal union
is informed by age, life experience, religiosity, and the
presence of children. Beliefs also play an important role.
Perhaps not surprisingly, individuals who marry more
than once are less likely to indicate that being legally
married is important or very important to their happiness compared to those who have only married once.94
Marriage is no longer the exclusive route to forming families. Indeed, the number of first marriages
continues to fall. That said, marriage is still a common
experience for the large majority of Canadians today.
And a significant number of Canadians go on to form
new relationships after divorce.

anadians aspire to have happy, lasting
relationships. For many, this will take the
form of marriage. Indeed, in a 2004 Vanier
Institute survey of family life, a clear majority of
Canadians of all ages, fully 80%, reported that getting
married at some point was “very important” (47%) or
“somewhat important” (33%) to them.95 No less than
90% of teens aged 15 to 19 years stated that they
expect to get married, and 88% say that they expect to
stay with the same partner for life.96
For these respondents, getting married is important
for several reasons. The most common reason given by
men and women, across all regions and all age groups
is the belief that marriage signifies commitment. Overall, 93% of Canadians held this view. A similarly high
percentage (85%) report that marriage is consistent
with their “moral values.”97
Three-quarters state that marriage is important because
children should be raised by married parents. However, younger adults aged 18 to 34 years are less likely
to hold this view (64%) compared to adults aged 55
and over (89%). Financial security and religious beliefs
are also commonly cited as reasons why marriage is
important. On the other hand, relatively few say that
pressure from family or friends is a reason why marrying is important.
It is important to note that widespread support for
marriage doesn’t necessarily mean that Canadians
don’t support cohabitation. Indeed, living commonlaw is widely accepted, notably among young people
and residents of Quebec. A 2009 survey of young
people aged 15 to 19 years found that over three-quarters approved of cohabitation, and at least one-third
stated explicitly that they planned to live with someone at some point.98

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|

By and large, Canadians view cohabitation as a
complement to marriage rather than a substitute for it.
The growing numbers of common-law unions suggest
that many will live in both types of unions at different points over their lives. Four in ten respondents in
the 2004 Vanier Institute survey, for example, stated
that they had lived in a common-law union at some
point. Of this group, three-quarters went on to marry
(not necessarily the partner with whom they had lived
common-law). And among those who were currently
living common-law (12% of all respondents), 44%
definitely expected to marry eventually, and another
19% reported that they would perhaps marry.
In choosing a life partner, Canadians reported that honesty
is the most important attribute, among both men and
women and across all age groups. Fifty percent of Canadians rank honesty first.99 Kindness is in second spot for
women. Men rank compatibility as the second most
important characteristic in choosing a potential partner,
followed by kindness. Respect ranks highly as well.
Religious commonality ranked 9th. That said, religious
affiliation was important for many religious groups.
For example, according to the 2006 Census, 73% of
brides who belonged to a non-Christian faith married another person of their faith. Roughly one-half
of Catholic brides married Catholic grooms; this was
true among Jewish marriage celebrants as well.100

And so what?

Clearly, the reasons for choosing to marry, when and
to whom are varied. Many of these reasons shift over
time and reflect changes in social, demographic, economic and cultural norms and patterns of behaviour.
What appears to be relatively constant among Canadians, however, is the desire to form stable, long-term,
intimate relationships.

hy do relationships end? The number one
reason according to a 2004 Vanier
Institute survey on family life is that
couples grow apart, in terms of different values,
interests, and goals. Other reasons – abuse, alcohol and
drug addiction, and infidelity – are clearly negative in
nature and are recognized as traditional grounds for
divorce or for ending any relationship. Career-related
conflict is also cited as an important reason. The
pressures of balancing work and family life, especially
in a context where two incomes are necessary for
families to make ends meet, can simply overwhelm.101
Divorce takes an emotional, social and monetary toll
on most people. According to the Vanier survey, about
84% of women and 73% of men said that the divorce
or separation was hard on them emotionally. About
72% of women also said that divorce or separation was
hard on them financially compared to 54% of men.
Analysis of the National Population Health Survey
(NPHS) reveals that individuals who experience a divorce
or separation are more likely to experience depression in the
year after separation than those who remain in a relationship. Men who have separated are six times more likely to
report symptoms of depression than men who remained
with their spouse, while the odds of depression after a
break-up among women were about two and a half times
greater than women who remained with their spouse.102
Union dissolution can set in motion a series of stressful
disruptions that create further personal and financial difficulties, which themselves may contribute
to depression. According to the NPHS, two years
after a break-up, women tended to live in households
with an income ranking far below that of their males
counterparts. People who experienced a break-up were
also more likely than those who remained married to

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report a decline in social support, especially men. For
the majority, depression was isolated to the period
immediately surrounding the break-up. Nonetheless,
depression continued to be a problem for a sizable
minority four years later.
In working through these transitions, many couples
turn to outside help. Over one-half of those who break
up (56.8%), according to the 2006 General Social
Survey, used at least one program or service.103 Just
under one-half (48.0%) used at least one legal or alternative service such as Alternative Dispute Resolution
to negotiate the terms of their separation. Three in ten
people (29.8%) used at least one social support service
such as counselling for adults and children, parent education or information sessions, or community resource
centres and support groups.
In the Vanier survey, nine out of ten women reported
that they were happier after the divorce than they had
been in their previous marriage, and some eight out
of ten men said the same. Less than one-half (47%) of
divorced persons claimed that they have been able to
achieve a good relationship with their former spouse.
About one in five reported that they should have
stayed together.

And so what?

The dissolution of marriages and of common-law
relationships is difficult for those directly involved, and
for children, family members, and friends. Change in
the relationship is more often than not accompanied
by other changes in living arrangements, household
income, social support, work status, residence and
neighbourhood, and in one’s sense of self. The care
and support that individuals have access to can make
a significant difference in navigating these transitions
and for the long term well-being of those involved.

he decision to have children is a major one.
Indeed, for many, having or adopting children
is synonymous with family. Nearly nine in ten
Canadians surveyed in a 2004 Vanier Institute study of
family life replied that it was “very important” (61%)
or “somewhat important” (26%) to have children in
their lifetimes.104 A near-unanimous 94% of teens aged
15 to 19 years in 2008 said that they wanted to have
children, an increase of almost ten percentage points
from the early 1990s.105
While Canada’s total fertility rate remains low in comparison to the past (1.66 children per woman in 2007),
the number of babies born each year has been rising
since 2001. In part, these trends reflect the movement
of the echo generation – children of the baby boomers
– through the life course. As importantly, this group of
women, now aged 30 to 44 years, is having more children.
As a result, over the past ten years, there has been
an important shift in the age structure of fertility.
In 1997, the age-specific fertility rate peaked among
women aged 25 to 29. Ten years later, the highest fertility rate had shifted to women aged 30 to 34 (at 106
per 1,000 women). As well, the average age of a woman
having a baby is now over 29 years of age, an increase
of two years since the mid 1980s. Across Canada, the
youngest mothers, on average, live in Nunavut and the
oldest in Ontario and British Columbia.106
The 2006 Census notes that a growing proportion of
young children (aged 4 and under) live with mothers
in their forties. In 2001, 7.8% of children aged 4 and
under had a mother who was between the ages of 40
and 49. By 2006, this proportion had increased to
9.4%. “This aging trend among mothers of young chil-

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dren, which translates into a larger age gap between
mothers and children, can be observed for married,
common-law and lone mothers.”107
What factors are important in influencing the number of children people have or plan to have? Young
adults aged 18 to 34 years point to the strength of
their relationship (86%), the state of their finances
(81%), and the state of their health (78%) as the most
important influences. Older respondents identify these
same factors, but not to the same degree. Interestingly,
significantly fewer adults aged 35 to 55 years and 55
years and over identified family finances and their
health as factors in deciding the number of children
they had. Older adults were also less likely to point to
“two-career family considerations.”108

And so what?

The advent of safe and effective contraception in the
1960s transformed the lives of women and men, providing the means to plan their family lives. For women,
there are clear benefits to delaying childbearing, most
notably improved economic resources over the course
of their lives. And for families, the high costs of raising
children, both in terms of time and money, can be
deterrents to starting a family or having more than one
or two children. At the same time, some have raised
concerns regarding the consequences of extending the
reproductive years into the mid-thirties and beyond.
Not only is the prospect of having children reduced for
older mothers, but the risk of negative health outcomes
for mothers and infants is much higher. For individual
families, the potential conflict between the timing of
having children and economic security can be a difficult
one to navigate. This very personal decision has significant consequences for society as a whole.

ome 15 years ago, about two out of ten babies
were born to women who were not legally
married. This has risen during the last decade. In
2007, 26% of babies were born to women who were not,
and had never been, married. Another 2% were born to
divorced, separated or widowed women. Most babies
(62%) were born to married mothers, while in 10% of
births, the marital status of the mother was not stated.109

The marital status of women giving birth varies greatly
by province. In Quebec, 59.5% of all births occur to
single, never-married women, up from 16% in 1981.110
Most of these children are born to cohabiting couples
in their twenties and thirties. In 2007, Ontario had the
smallest proportion of babies (12%) born to nevermarried women.111 In the territories, a significant
number of children are born to never-married women,
over three-quarters in Nunavut.
Younger mothers are less likely to be married. In 2007,
less than 10% of births to women under 20 years of
age were to married women. This increases to 33% for
women aged 20 to 24 years, to 62% for those aged 25
to 29 years, to 75% for those aged 30 to 34 years, and
to 77% for those aged 35 to 39 years.112
Canada’s extramarital birth rate of 28% of all live
births is moderate compared to other countries like
Sweden where 55% of births occur outside of marriage.113 Countries with higher rates of cohabitation
usually have higher rates of extramarital births. In
Canada, births to common-law couples – and to a
lesser extent, births to single mothers – has been driv-

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ing the upward trend in the proportion of extramarital
births even as the overall number of births has been
trending down.
A longitudinal study of children born in the 1980s
and 1990s found that the proportion of children born
within a common-law union rose from 9% of those
born in 1983 to 1984 to 22% of those born in 1996
to 1997. The proportion of births to single mothers
(outside of a union) increased from under 6% to 10%
during this same time period. The highest proportions
of out-of-union births were found in the provinces at
the extreme west and east of Canada – in British Columbia (9%) and the Atlantic provinces (11%).114

And so what?

The context at birth has changed significantly during the
last two decades. While most children today are born
to legally married couples, the number and percentage
born “outside of wedlock” has increased. The popularity of cohabitation in Quebec largely accounts for the
rise in common-law union births in Canada, but there
has been an increase in other regions as well. The rise in
births to older never-married women also represents another important change in patterns of family formation.
Increasingly, births to single women have become an
important route or entry point into lone-parent family
life, particularly in regions such as Atlantic Canada.115
This diversity in family formation is not new but it
highlights the need for greater appreciation and understanding of the changing dynamics of family life – from
the perspective of both parents and their children.

anadians strongly approve of adoption. A
2004 Ipsos-Reid survey found that 45% of
adults were very positive about adoption,
while 46% were somewhat positive. There was no
perceived difference between adopted and biological
families: three-quarters believed that parents would
feel the same satisfaction and reward from adoption as
from raising a child from birth.116
These sentiments are demonstrated every year as
thousands of families adopt children into their homes.
The latest estimates suggest that there are about 2,600
domestic adoptions – both public and private – per
year in Canada. In addition, there are approximately
2,000 international adoptions each year.117At the same
time, in 2007, almost 67,000 children lived in care of
the government, many of whom are permanent wards
and available for adoption.118
On the international front, about 22% of all adoptions
in 2008 were from the People’s Republic of China,
followed by the United States and Ethiopia (both at
10%), and Haiti (8%). Overall, close to two-thirds of
international adoptions are girls due in large part to
the fact that almost all of the adoptions from China
are of girls. About seven out of ten international adoptions involve children under five years of age.119
The Ipsos-Reid survey indicates that Canadians perceive
“speed” and “ease” to be the main reasons why some
Canadians choose international adoption over adopting
within Canada. A significant obstacle to domestic adop-

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tion is also the concern expressed by many (78%) that
birth parents might want to take the child back.
Aboriginal Canadians are significantly more likely
than others to have had a personal adoption experience. Fourteen percent of Aboriginal adults have been
a foster parent versus 5% of the general public and
12% have been raised by a foster parent versus 3% of
the general public.120
In a 2000 survey on social support for adoption, an
overwhelming majority (99%) agreed that it was very
acceptable for married couples to adopt children, while
77% agreed that it was very or somewhat acceptable
for common-law couples to do so. Over one-half
thought that is was acceptable for single men (55%)
and single women (66%) to adopt, while under onehalf approved of adoptions by gay (46%) or lesbian
(48%) couples.121

And so what?

Adoption is, and always has been, a means of finding
a home for a child in need. At the same time, the high
number of children in care of the state and the low
numbers of those children placed in permanent families is troubling. Much more can be done to enhance
public awareness of the need for adoptive and other
forms of permanent families for children in need, for
children here in Canada and abroad. More adequate
funding is needed to support adoptions services and,
to provide needed supports for adoptive children with
special needs and their new families.

Source: Adoption Council of Canada (2009), 2008 International Adoption Statistics.

Number of children adopted and children in care, by Province/Territory
CAN

NL

PE

NS

NB

QC

ON

MB

SK

AB

BC

YT

NT

NU

Domestic adoptions
(2001)

2,600*

71

23

156

458

229

624

111

168

506

163

8

74

na

International
adoptions (2008)**

1,908

0

7

27

30

525

600

65

58

159

311

1

0

0

Children in care
(definition varies
by province) (2001)

58,000***

489

238

2,020

1,434

5,440

2,906

7,948

9,956

187

491

na

10,577 16,516

* The total for Canada is the sum of the provinces. This is just a rough estimate since the provincial reports are not compatible. Most, but not all provinces, include adoptions by relatives or stepfamilies. The estimate for the Northwest
Territories includes “Native Custom Adoptions”.
** There were 118 international adoptions where the province of the adoptive parents was not stated.
*** The total for Canada is the sum of the provinces. This is just a rough estimate since the provincial reports are not compatible. The estimate for Quebec related to investigations where safety and development is compromised.
Source: Adoption Council of Canada (faxed information), Human Resources Development Canada, Child and Family Services Statistical Report 1998-1999 to 2000-2001 and Citizenship and Immigration Canada as per Adoption Council
of Canada website http://www.adoption.ca/

here has been a steady increase in the number
of children living in out-of-home care since
the early 1990s. Approximately 67,000
children in Canada were living in out-of-home care
across Canada in 2007, a rate of 9.2 children in care
per 1,000 children, up from an estimated 42,000
children (or 5.7 children per 1,000) in 1992.122
Approximately 8,000 First Nations children are in
the care of First Nation child welfare agencies, out of
a total of 27,000 First Nations children in care. There
are more First Nations children in child welfare care
in Canada than at the height of residential schools.
Available data suggest a range of 30%-40% of children
in care are Aboriginal across Canada.123
According to Indian and Northern Affairs Canada
(INAC), the number of status Indian children entering child welfare care rose 71.5% nationally between
1995 and 2001. Several reports based on data from
the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child
Abuse and Neglect (CIS-2003) have shown that
neglect is the most commonly substantiated form
of maltreatment for investigations involving First
Nations children, whereas exposure to domestic
violence is the most commonly substantiated form
of maltreatment for investigations involving nonAboriginal children.124
Additionally, CIS-2003 findings show that 29% of
substantiated maltreatment investigations involving
First Nations children led to some type of out of home
placement (kin foster care, other family foster care,
group home, residential/secure treatments, or informal
kin placement) either during or at the conclusion of
the investigation, compared to only 11% of substantiated investigations involving non-Aboriginal children.

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Children coming into care today have more complex
needs than in the past. Canadian research has documented the increase in emotional and behavioural problems
among of children in foster care, rising from 30-40% in
the 1970-1980s to 48-80% in the mid-1990s.125

And so what?

The number of child welfare investigations and
placements has increased significantly across Canada
in recent years. Whereas in the past, children were
often placed in group care or institutional settings,
increasingly, child welfare agencies are seeking out
family-based care options. One form of family-based
care is kinship foster care, where children are placed in
foster homes with relatives. Another emerging form of
family-based care is “guardianship” care where guardianship care status is granted to a known family or
specified friend to indicate permanency of care but the
province retains legal guardian status until the child
reaches adulthood.126
Existing services have not kept up with the acute needs
of these vulnerable children. Within this context,
families and service providers are struggling to provide
and improve services for children in care. While the
provinces, territories and First Nations have established commendable programs and strategies within
their own jurisdictions, lack of a coordinated strategy
and funding – especially in First Nation communities
– traps acutely vulnerable children in high risk situations. Given the overrepresentation of First Nations
children in care, it is imperative to development culturally sensitive policy and practice. Effecting change also
calls for a much greater emphasis by child protection
authorities on the structural factors contributing to
child maltreatment such as poverty, poor housing, and
parental mental health problems.

he typical family with children is now smaller
than it once was. Even with recent increases
in the number of births, there has been a
long-term decline in the rate of fertility over the past
three decades. For a variety of reasons – high levels of
labour force participation, pursuit of post-secondary
training, effective birth control, and later marriage to
name just a few – women are having fewer children,
and family size is decreasing.

single (never married) individuals are more likely to
report that they do not expect to have children than
those who are in committed relationships. Religious
and cultural values are also important factors influencing the decision to have children. “Canadians who feel
that being married or being part of a couple is not at
all important to their happiness are considerably more
likely to expect to stay childfree than those to whom
these relationships are very important.”128

In 2006, families with children had an average of 1.8
children at home, down from 2.0 children in 1981.
This trend is evident among married couples where
the number of children slipped from 2.1 in 1981 to
1.9 in 2006. There has also been a reduction in the
average number of children in female and male loneparent families from 1.7 children in both instances
to 1.5 children and 1.4 children, respectively. By
contrast, the average number of children living in
common-law families has stayed about the same (at
1.7 children) over the last two decades.

And so what?

The vast majority of young people report that they
intend to have at least one child. However, not
everyone wants children. A 2001 study found that
7% of Canadians aged 20 to 34 years – representing
434,000 individuals – indicated that they did not
intend to have children. Among men and women, the
proportion not wishing to have children was quite
similar: 8% for men and 7% for women.127

The trend toward smaller families is well established,
the result of a combination of factors. For the children, the trend toward smaller families means that
they are growing up with fewer brothers, sisters and
cousins. For parents, and mothers especially, these decisions mean that they are spending less of their adult
lives devoted to the care of dependent children – and
that fewer children will be available to assist them
when they are older themselves.
At the same time, comparatively high levels of repartnering after divorce or separation means that a small
but growing group of children will experience even
larger family networks with the addition of new parental figures, new step-siblings and half-siblings.129
Understanding how stepfamilies and blended families
evolve and care for each other is an important area of
current research.

There is a strong relationship between the decision
to have children and marital status. Not surprisingly,

ewer children are being raised in families where
the parents are married. Just two decades ago,
eight in ten (81.2%) children aged 0 to 14 years
were living with parents who were legally married. In
2006, the proportion of children living with married
parents had fallen by over 15 percentage points to
65.7%.130
With the rapid increase in common-law-couple families,
the percentage of children under the age of 15 living
with common-law parents jumped from 4.5% in 1986
to 14.6% in 2006, a three-fold increase in 20 years.

62

Younger children are more likely than older children
to live in common-law families. In 2006, one in five
children aged 0 to 4 years (19.3%) were living with
common-law parents, while a smaller 13.9% of those
aged 5 to 9 did so, and 11.8 % of those aged 10 to14.
By contrast, older children are more likely than younger children to live with lone parents: 21.7% of children
aged 10 to 14 compared to 19.0% of children aged 5 to
9 and 14.6% of children aged 0 to 4.132

And so what?

Rising rates of separation and out-of-union births
mean more children are experiencing life in a loneparent family as well. A century ago, it was not
uncommon to loose a parent to illness or injury. Many
mothers died in childbirth and fathers were lost in
war. Today, the dissolution of couple relationships is
the major reason for the rise in lone-parent families,
but never-married lone parents also constitute a rising
proportion of the lone-parent population.

This portrait presents a snapshot of children’s families at
a single point in time. We know, however, from surveys
that track individuals and families over time that many
children will experience change in their living situation. Children living in couple families may experience
separation and divorce, and live in lone-parent families
for a period of time. Others may experience new family
situations as one or both parents form new relationships. This is particularly true for young children. And a
significant proportion of children born to single mothers will live in a two-parent family at some later point.

Approximately, one in five children aged 14 and
under (18.3%) lived with a lone parent in 2006.
According to the National Longitudinal Survey
of Children and Youth, for example, one-third of
children born in the 1983 to 1984 period had lived
in a one-parent family by the age of 15, whereas a
similar proportion of children born just five years
later (1988-89) had experienced lone-parenthood by
their tenth birthday.131

Given the pace of change in family relationships, it is
difficult to talk about “family structure” as this implies
permanence. The terms “family life course” or “family life
pathways” are more appropriate as they convey the fluidity and diversity of family life. This more dynamic picture
of children’s family lives is an important step forward
in understanding the impact of different living arrangements on children and their parents, and how changes in
family context impact long-term health and well-being.

rowing numbers of children are experiencing
change in their family situations. Data on
divorce and separation reveal that children
are often involved. According to the 2006 General
Social Survey, four in ten adults going through a
martial or common-law union separation had
dependent children.133
Many of these parents go onto form new unions over
time, creating new living arrangements and familial relationships. Within three years of separation, one-third
of fathers and one-quarter of mothers had already
remarried or started living with another partner. Ten
years after separation, over 63% of children had seen
their mother set up home with a new partner, and 67%
had seen their father do so.134
Some children experience several transitions. Of those
children aged 6 to 13 years in 1996 to 1997, whose
parents were living together at the time of their birth,
some 77.8% had lived in only one family situation.
About 8.0% had lived through one family transition
in which parents separated or a parent died. Another
7.8% lived through two family transitions, and 6.4%
lived through three or more.
Children born to common-law parents were much
more likely to experience change than those born to
married parents. One-half of the children born to
cohabiting parents (50%) had experienced at least one
change in their parents’ conjugal situation by 1996 to

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1997, and one-third (34%) had experienced at least
two. This compares with 18% and 11% of children
whose parents were married.
The situation for children born to parents who were
living apart at their birth was much more fluid again.
Fully 84% experienced at least one transition by 199697.135 About 45% experienced one family transition.
Almost one in five (18%) lived through two family transitions and about the same proportion lived
through three family transitions.

And so what?

These complex family pathways are likely to become even
more common among children born in the 1990s and
2000s. Family research needs to take into account the
different pathways leading up to any given “family structure” and the different pathways that follow from it.
Heather Juby, Céline Le Bourdais, and Nicole MarcilGratton, leading Canadian demographers, make the
point that “[t]here are few hard-and-fast rules as to
how these transitions should be made, how rights and
responsibilities towards children should be divided
between parents in different households, and how
parents should share resources among children who do
not all live in the same household.”136 Understanding
this complexity is essential for anybody involved in
assessing the impact of family change on children, or in
developing public policies that deal effectively with the
evolving complexity of family life.

Family transitions among children aged 6-13 (1996-97)
Transitions for children born in
a family in which parents were
living together at the time of birth
(legally married or common-law)

Transitions for children born in
a family in which parents were
living apart at the time of birth
(single-parent, divorced, separated or widowed and not living
common-law)

% of children who have experienced no
family transitions

77.8%

16.2%

% of children who have experienced one
family transition

8.0

44.7

% of children who have experienced two
family transitions

7.8

18.0

% of children who have experienced three
family transitions

4.9

16.9

% of children who have experienced four
or more family transitions

1.5

4.2

Note: A transition occurs with a change in the marital status of the parent and can include marriage or re-marriage, divorce, separation, break-up of a
common-law relationship or the death of a parent.
Source: Juby, et.al. (2004), Moving On: The expansion of the family network after parents separate, Report for Department of Justice Canada, 2004-FCY-9E.

hen couples with children separate, issues
of child custody and support are of
primary concern. These include issues
related to legal custody (the responsibility to make
long-term decisions about how the child is to be
raised), physical custody (the responsibility for the day
to day care of the child), and joint custody. In Canada,
agreements concerning custody, access and support are
negotiated and adjudicated with a view to securing the
“best interest of the child.”
In most instances, parents negotiate private custody
arrangements including child support. Recent data
from the 2006 General Social Survey confirm that the
majority of parents still rely on informal agreements
setting out the terms of custody, access and support.137
Parents may turn to the courts when disputes arise.
Historically, courts have tended to award custody to
mothers, but this has started to change. Joint custody
awards138 have grown significantly since the mid 1990s.
In 2004, joint custody was awarded to the parents of
47% of all children involved in custody cases, up from
21% in 1995. Only 8% of children were in the custody
of their fathers, down from 11% in 1995, while the
percentage of children awarded to mothers fell from
68% to 45%.139
Custody arrangements, however, change over time for
a variety of reasons, including the wishes of the children. While the number of joint custody awards has
risen, children experience actual shared living arrangements in only 6% of court-ordered cases and 12% of
private cases. The large majority of children continue
to reside with their mothers even in instances where
there is shared custody.140

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Provincial statistics suggest that non-payment of
child support remains a serious problem. The national
default rate (including late payment, partial payment
and full default) is estimated at ranging between 50 to
75%, and in only 43% of cases is it paid regularly.141
Quebec is distinctive not only with regard to commonlaw unions, but also in the way parental responsibilities
are shared at separation. In Quebec, shared living arrangements and sole father custody are more common;
agreements made about custody and access are generally more strictly adhered to; and children are more
often consulted about these arrangements.142

And so what?

The experience of divorce and separation is a profound
life transition for most children. Canadian research
demonstrates the household conditions that contribute to the likelihood of divorce also contribute to the
onset of problems among children before separation.143
What is harmful to children is regular exposure to parental conflict and the decline in the financial security
and parental resources that too often accompanies
divorce or separation.
Redefining family relationship post-divorce can be
often as challenging. “There are no social rules or
conventions governing how divorced families should
behave, nor are their conventions governing how divorced or blended families fit into society.”144 Children
are in the position of navigating not one but two or
more new family situations. From this perspective, an
exclusive focus on “family breakdown” can serve to
impede constructive legislative and policy changes that
could cushion the problems that children and families
can experience when forging new family relationships.

ccording to the 2006 General Social Survey,
there are just over half a million stepfamilies
in Canada. These comprise 12% of all couple
families with children, unchanged from 2001.145 A
stepfamily refers to a family in which at least one of
the children in the household is from a previous
relationship of one of the parents.146
In the past, stepfamilies were usually created when one
partner or spouse (most often the mother) died and
the spouse remarried. Today, stepfamilies are more
commonly formed after the dissolution of a marriage
or common-law union.
Almost one-half (46%) of all stepfamilies are blended
families. A blended family is one with at least one child
from a previous relationship of the mother or father
or both, plus one created in the current relationship.
About eight out of ten blended families have had at
least one child together. Forty-three percent of stepfamilies are stepfather families (stepfather, mother and
her children) while the remaining 11% are stepmother
families (stepmother, father and his children).
There are considerable differences from one stepfamily
to the next, and the differences increase as stepfamilies
evolve. This is certainly true from the child’s perspective. Stepfamilies not only add stepparents to a child’s
family network but often stepsiblings and half-siblings
as well. The younger half-siblings for their part live in
two different families at the same time – a stepfamily
and an intact family.
Second and third unions experience higher rates of
dissolution than first-time unions. That said, stepfamily couples who decide to have a child together stay
together longer than those who do not. Furthermore

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stepmother families also tend to be relatively stable
over time – as much so as the average intact family.147
About one-half of all the parents of stepfamilies are
legally married and one-half are in common-law relationships. The situation in Quebec is much different
than in the rest of Canada. In Quebec, just one-quarter
(26%) of the parents of stepfamilies are legally married
compared to the majority in the rest of Canada.

And so what?

Stepfamilies are navigating uncharted territory. Andrew Cherlin talks about the stepfamily as an “incomplete institution”148 because there are few norms to
define family relationships and to resolve the difficult
and complex problems that can arise.149 It can take
many years for stepfamilies to come together, to clarify
roles and responsibilities vis-à-vis other family members, and to establish a solid identity as a family unit.
Policy-makers and courts have only just begun to
grapple with the complexities that stepfamilies present,
particularly around issues such as the rights and responsibilities of step-parents. For example, stepparents
have been ordered to pay child support for stepchildren where there is a long standing relationship. As
with the debates about common-law unions and same
sex marriages, courts are taking the lead in setting out
the parameters of caring relationships – and the benefits and duties that flow from them.
These debates revolve around fundamental questions
about what constitutes a family: What constitutes a parental relationship? How should familial resources be shared
within and across households? What are the obligations
of different family members to support and care for one
another? How are the best interests of children protected?

n Canadian history, only recently have
families experienced a life stage that can be
termed middle age. Prior to recent times, life
expectancy was so much lower that people often
reached the end of their lives at ages that would be
considered mid-life today.”150 Social and economic
changes, in combination with increases in longevity,
have today created a stage of family life that is arguably
the most diverse – and the most difficult to define.
Traditional markers such as children leaving home
don’t always apply to this group. Rather, mid life is a
time in life when some people are starting new relationships, others are going through the dissolution of a
union, still others celebrating many years of marriage.
Some mid-life Canadians are becoming parents for the
first time, while another group is becoming grandparents. Some parents are re-entering the paid labour
force after years caring for young children, others are
scaling down their paid work to take care of family
members who are ill and/or aging.
A majority of middle-aged adults are still engaged in the
paid labour market, and for most, middle age represents the peak years of their earning power. However,
economic restructuring over the past two decades – and
the loss of good paying jobs in sectors like manufacturing and construction – have hit many mid-life families
hard. As a result, some mid-life families find themselves
without work, without pensions or real opportunities
for secure full-time employment with benefits.
Differences in the life course of men and women are
also readily apparent in mid life. Upon the death or
divorce of a spouse, women can quickly slide into

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poverty, laying the groundwork for years of economic
vulnerability as they age. Many women do go on to
form new relationships, but the likelihood of middleaged women doing so is lower than among younger
women or men.
This is also the life stage when caregiving responsibilities often collide. Many mid-life families cope with the
demands of caregiving for older members, while raising
children or supporting young adults who may be finding it difficult to establish independent households.
For example, two-thirds of women and 60% of men
aged 35 to 54 years have children living at home.

And so what?

The diversity that characterizes this stage of family
life makes it difficult to make generalizations. But
balancing the demands of earning a living and caring
for family members both young and old is a common
concern across mid-life families – and a source of stress
for many.
How well mid-life families are able to cope with these
demands depends on many factors, including personal income and family resources, social networks of
support, and access to supportive government social
policies and programs.
Differences between families, often evident early on,
accumulate over time. For example, women who have
dropped out of the labour market to care for young
children can have difficulty breaking back in or finding paid work that is flexible and well-paid. An older
worker who is injured at work or laid off may never be
able to get a comparable job again.

ncreasingly, young people are leaving home at older
ages – and coming back. Leaving home has become
a longer process wherein “close ties with the family
home are unravelled slowly rather than being cut
quickly.”151 Many young adults today are coming and
going multiple times as they seek to complete postsecondary education, form new relationships or carve
out a place in the labour market. Parents are providing
significant levels of support – both financial and
emotional – to their adult children.152

In 2006, six in ten young adults aged 20 to 24 (60.3%)
lived in their parental home, up from 40% in 1981. And
among those aged 25 to 29 years, one-quarter (26.0%)
lived at home, more than double the 12% of 1981.
Young men are staying home the longest. As of 2006,
65% of men aged 20 to 24 years lived with their parents
compared to 55% of women. At age 25 to 29, 30% of
men were still at home compared to 20% of women.
Most of this increase took place during the early 1980s
and early 1990s, years during which Canada experienced economic recessions. Even as labour conditions
improved through the 1990s, young people stayed in
school to improve their education and skills. Large
increases in tuition fees over the same period meant that
many stayed home when possible to reduce living costs.
In Canada, there are striking differences by region. Notably, about one-half of young adults aged 20 to 29 years
from Newfoundland and Labrador and Ontario were
living with their parents in 2006, compared to less than
one-third in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Young adults
living in large urban centres were also more likely to live
at home with their parents, a reflection, in part, of the
larger new immigrant populations in these areas.153

to the parental home. In 2001, one-quarter (24%)
of parents who lived with adult children were in
fact living with a “boomerang kid.”154 One-third of
“boomerang” youth (34.7%) in Canada return home for
school-related reasons, while one-quarter (24.0%) return
for financial reasons. One in ten (10.5%) return to the
parental home because of the end of a relationship.155
Recent research has shown that many young people
are living at home or choosing to return in order to
save money or to pay off student debt. They are willing
to forego independence for the security and comfort
of their parents’ home. For their part, parents of coresident children enjoy the companionship and helping
their children out, but they are most satisfied when their
adult children reciprocate support and show signs of
moving towards greater independence.156

And so what?

Of the many changes in family life over the past
two decades the increase in the proportion of young
adults living with their parents into their twenties
and beyond is one of the most significant. By leaving
home later, young people enjoy the continued support
of their families, support that is often critical given
the high costs of living and education today. Parents
and adult children report that, for the most part, coresidence is a positive experience.
At the same time, delayed transition does have consequences. “At the individual level, the most negative implication is that young people will not have saved enough
during a shorter work life, partly because they entered
full-time work later, partly because they have spent more
time in education, and have been slow at establishing
their financial independence and leaving home.”157

The same factors that lead young people to stay at
home longer also encourage young people to return

anada’s seniors are living longer than ever before
and driving important changes to established
household patterns. Today, most seniors live
with a spouse – or alone – for many years after children
leave home. According to the 2006 Census, 59.9% of
Canadians over age 65 lived in a private household with
their spouse or common-law partner and/or their
children,158 a slight increase from the early 1980s.159
The number of seniors living on their own increased as
well between 1981 and 2001, but has levelled off since
then. In 2006, 26.0% of seniors over the age of 65 lived
alone in a private home – 33.8% of women and 16.0%
of men.160 In addition, 7.5% of seniors lived in collective dwellings such as nursing homes or long-term care
facilities, a proportion that is expected to grow as the
numbers of the frail elderly increase.
Contrary to popular belief, Canadian families of the
past did not live in large, multi-generational households. High rates of mortality and shorter life expectancies meant that the vast majority of households
were made up of parents and their dependent children.
Interestingly, the multi-generational household is more
reflective of today’s family experiences. In 2001, close
to one in five seniors (17.6%) shared a home with their
adult children and grandchildren.161 Over half of a million seniors (514,800) lived with their grandchildren
in 2006, over one-half of whom (52.5%) lived in three
generation households with the children, two parents
and grandparent present, and about one-third (32.3%)
lived with a lone-parent and their children.162

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The proportion of three-generation households has
been rising, especially in urban centres such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. High rates of immigration, notably from Asia where extended living arrangements are common, are driving these changes.163
From the children’s perspective, 209,000 children
aged 14 and under – 3.8% of this age group – lived
with their grandparents on a full-time basis.164 Of
this group, a small proportion, numbering 28,200 in
2006, lived with their grandparents with no parent
present. In these skip-generation families, two-thirds
of the grandparents are also the primary financial
providers. Six in ten of these children lived with
both grandparents, while the remaining group lived
with only one grandparent present. In total, over
65,000 children of all ages lived alone with at least
one grandparent.

And so what?

The ‘longevity revolution’ poses significant challenges,
but there is much more to aging families than caregiving and dependency. Research shows that many older
parents continue to provide assistance and support to
their children, well into very old age. Older spouses
are also providing the lion’s share of care to each other.
Indeed, older adults are one of the most active groups
of volunteers in communities – providing assistance
to friends and neighbours. Among those living alone,
siblings often serve as an important source of support.165 Supporting seniors through these critical stages
in family life course is essential to the well-being of all
family members.

Collective dwelling = Dwelling used for commercial, institutional or communal purposes, such as a hotel, a hospital or a work camp. Over 90% of seniors living in collective dwellings live in a health care related facility such as a nursing home, residence for seniors, or long-term care facility. Census family = Refers to a married couple
(with or without children of either or both spouses), a couple living common-law (with or without children of either or both partners) or a lone parent of any marital
status, with at least one child living in the same dwelling. A couple may be of opposite or same sex. Other family situations = includes living with a parent or another
census family. Other situations = individual living with another relative(s) or non-relative, but not with a census family.
Source: Statistics Canada, 2006 Census of Canada, Catalogue No. 97-554-XWE2006054; Statistics Canada, 2006 Census of Canada, Catalogue No. 97-553-XCB2006018.

conomic co-operation is a defining feature of
family life. Individuals come together, not only
to form bonds of care, affection and interest,
but to pursue economic security through the
generation, exchange and distribution of economic
resources. We can think about the economic
foundation and function of families in many ways. On
the one hand, families play a critical role in the market
economy – selling their labour to generate resources to
sustain its members, and in so doing, generating the
resources to sustain local and national economies. On
the other hand, families and kinship networks, more
broadly, are themselves economic units engaged
variously in the project of earning, spending, saving,
caring and planning – all activities that highlight the
centrality of intra-family production and exchange.
Thus, families need markets and markets need families.
The capacity that each individual family, household or
individual has to attain economic security is mediated
by three primary determinants: labour market attachment, income distribution, and wealth accumulation.
Each of these factors has profound impact on the
extent to which families are able to fulfill their obligations of care and support, and to provide for the needs
and opportunities of members.

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Unprecedented rates of labour market participation
among women in the last twenty years largely accounts
for the average upswing in family incomes as families increase their hours of paid employment. In many families,
women’s incomes have become a key pillar of family economic security. Indeed, a growing number of women are
the primary earners within their families. This shift has
profoundly changed the economic status of women and
the earning capacity of families. The economic “penalty”
attached to “non-participation” is considerable.
Not every family, however, has the capacity or inclination to send one or more earners into the paid labour
market. Lone parents, older families that have relied
on a single earner model, or families providing primary
care for children or for members who are aging or
living with a disability are faced with their own set of
challenges related to provisioning for the economic,
physical and emotional well-being of members.
Some families address these challenges through flexible,
though often unstable, work arrangements; others rely
on elaborate social and family networks to fill in the
gaps left by inadequate income or insufficient time.
And for others still, economic security remains elusive.
Many jobs in Canada simply do not pay well enough to

Our challenge as a nation is to ensure through
responsive policies and community and workplace
programs that all families have equal access
to the opportunities necessary to achieve and
sustain economic security.
adequately support one’s self or one’s family. Low wage
jobs are often temporary or part-time, and they typically
provide few if any benefits beyond those legislated by
law. For the poor and working poor, safeguards against
poverty such as post-secondary education, stable employment, home ownership and investments are often
out of reach. For children living in poor families, in particular, low income simply fails to provide the resources
necessary for good health and developmental outcomes.
Large inequalities of wealth and income between the
richest and poorest 20% of Canadian families are
enduring and prominent features of Canadian society.
The relationship between wealth and income is rather
obvious: the lower the income the lower the capacity to
accumulate wealth – through savings, investments, or
the purchase of appreciating assets such as real estate.
Nowhere is this inequality more evident than with
respect to household spending. Quite simply, higher
income households tend to spend significantly more on
everything. The spending disparity between Canada’s
richest and poorest households is commonly referred
to as the affordability gap and speaks to the tendency
among low income households to forego certain purchases that might otherwise be considered essential.
For many middle- and lower-income households,
yearly expenditures exceed annual income. When this

happens, families must either borrow and/or dispose
of assets to make up the shortfall. Debt has become
a common feature of many household financial
spreadsheets, leaving more and more Canadian families and individuals with little room to save. Savings
provide families and individuals with an important
financial buffer to deal with unexpected events such
as the loss of a job or illness. The long-term decline
in the rate of savings leaves many vulnerable to the
negative impacts of economic insecurity.
Clearly, time and money are basic resources for any
family. Securing and balancing the demands of both
is a huge challenge for most. Over the past 30 years,
profound shifts in how families provide for the economic security of members have triggered corollary
shifts in family functioning and family dynamics,
including everything from the division of paid and
unpaid labour and care responsibilities, to retirement
planning, to decision making around household
expenditures and investments, to who will work what
hours or take parental leave upon the birth or adoption of a child.
Our challenge as a nation is to ensure through
responsive policies and community and workplace
programs that all families have equal access to the
opportunities necessary to achieve and sustain economic security.

ne of the most significant trends of the past
few decades is the rising labour market
participation of women. In 1976, less than
one-half (46%) of all women aged 15 and over were in
the paid labour force, but this has climbed steadily,
reaching 63% in 2009.166 Women in their so-called
“prime” working years (aged 25 to 54 years) have
experienced the greatest shift, with 82% now in the
paid labour force, compared to 52% in 1976.
In contrast, the labour force participation rate among
men aged 15 and over has been declining slowly over
the last three decades, falling from 78% in 1976 to 72%
in 2009. Among men in their prime working years,
participation in the labour market remains high at 91%,
but this too is lower than in 1976, when it was 95%.167
Over this period, the biggest decline was recorded
among men aged 55 to 64 years, for whom rates fell
from 76% in 1976 to a low of 58% in 1995. In more
recent years, labour force participation has started
to climb among older workers – as both men and
women are staying in, or returning to, the labour force.
In 2009, 68% of men and 56% of women aged 55 to
64 years were in the labour force – a trend likely to
continue.168
The gap between the labour force participation of men
and women has narrowed considerably, from roughly
32 percentage points in 1976 to nine percentage
points today. This convergence is most notable among
young adults. In 2009, the labour force participation
rate of young men and women aged 15 to 24 years was

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the same at 64%. Employment gains among teenage
girls have pushed their labour force participation above
teenage boys for the first time (54% compared to 51%
in 2009).
Employment growth among young workers has been
particularly strong in industries such as retail trade,
and accommodation and food services. Young men
have also been able to find work in construction, but
their share of employment in manufacturing, natural
resources, agriculture and the transportation sector has
declined, notably in 2009. This is one of the key factors
behind the erosion of earnings among young men.

And so what?

Women’s increasing involvement in paid work has
profoundly changed the economic status of women
and the earning capacity of families. In the face of
decades of stagnant wages and incomes, women’s earnings are now essential to the economic security of most
households.
The decline in men’s participation is important as
well. Labour force participation rates – and employment rates – have been trending down for thirty years.
Employment levels among men rose slightly in the
past decade, but rates of growth remain below those
for women. More recently, job losses among men in
their prime working years associated with the 2008-09
recession have reversed these gains. As a result of converging labour force participation rates, the division of
labour within families and the relationship between
families and the economy continues to change.

Labour force characteristics, population aged 15 years and over, by sex, and Province (2009)
CAN

NL

PE

NS

NB

QC

ON

MB

SK

AB

BC

Labour force participation rate*
% of total population

67.3%

59.3%

68.1%

64.5%

64.7%

65.2%

67.3%

69.4%

70.2%

74.3%

66.0%

% of men

72.0

64.1

72.2

68.5

69.0

69.8

71.8

75.4

75.9

80.3

70.5

% of women

62.6

54.8

64.4

60.9

60.6

60.9

63.0

63.5

64.5

68.0

61.5

Employment rate
% of total population

61.7%

50.1%

59.9%

58.6%

59.0%

59.7%

61.2%

65.8%

66.8%

69.4%

61.0%

% of men

65.2

52.5

62.2

61.0

62.0

62.9

64.4

71.4

71.8

74.5

64.5

% of women

58.3

47.8

57.9

56.4

56.1

56.7

58.2

60.3

61.8

64.1

57.5

Unemployment rate
% of labour force

8.3%

15.5%

12.0%

9.2%

8.9%

8.5%

9.0%

5.2%

4.8%

6.6%

7.6%

% of men

9.4

18.0

13.8

11.0

10.2

9.9

10.3

5.3

5.3

7.2

8.6

% of women

7.0

12.6

10.1

7.4

7.5

6.9

7.7

5.0

4.2

5.8

6.5

*Note: Those in labour force include those who are employed or unemployed and looking for employment.
Source: Statistics Canada, Labour force, employed and unemployed, numbers and rates, by province, CANSIM Table 282-0002.

n the past, entry into marriage and motherhood
meant most women either stayed within, or
returned to, the home, maintaining what is often
referred to as the “traditional” male breadwinner/
female homemaker model of family life. But this has
clearly changed.

employment. On average, lone parents are older, have
slightly fewer children and are more highly educated
than in the past. These demographic changes have
led to the sizable increase in employment noted here,
and in turn, to a significant increase in employment
income and a reduction in rates of low income.172

Thirty years ago, less than one-half (48.1%) of married women aged 25 to 54 years were in the paid
labour force. By 2008, over eight in ten (81.5%) were
employed or seeking paid work. There is now no
statistically significant difference between the labour
force participation of married women and single or
divorced women.169

And so what?

Motherhood is also much less likely to alter women’s
labour force participation. According to the 2006 Census, 73% of all women with children less than 16 years
of age living at home were employed on a full-time or
part-time basis, up from 39% in 1976.170 There have
been especially dramatic increases in employment levels
among women with very young children. By 2006, twothirds of women with children under age 3 years (64%)
were employed, more than double the proportion in
1976 (at 28%). Overall, in 2006, 66% of mothers with
pre-school children were employed as were 78% of
those whose youngest child was aged 6 to 15 years.171
Today, mothers in two-parent families have higher
rates of employment than do female lone parents (74%
compared to 70%). At the same time, there has been a
significant increase in the employment rate of female
lone parents since the mid 1990s. One-half of lone
parents with children under 16 years were employed
in 1995; by 2006, fully 70% were engaged in paid

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The difference in labour force participation between
women with children and women without children
has been closing steadily. For most women today,
marriage and motherhood do not signal a long-term
withdrawal from paid employment. The consequences
of this change are numerous, with implications for
women themselves, their families, and their employers.
At home, the time available for household work has
diminished. Roles, responsibilities and expectations
around the sharing of domestic labour have changed,
although women continue to carry the majority of
this work. The experience of juggling multiple – and
often conflicting – work and family demands is commonplace. In the face of conflicts, families are forced
to rethink the ways in which they organize both their
family and work lives.173
As such, there is a new imperative for employers and
governments to consider how best to support employees in their work and family roles. While many businesses recognize that their employees lead increasingly
stressful lives, progress to implement family-friendly
policies in the workplace has been slow. Similarly, public supports for families such as child care and access
to flexible hours vary widely across Canada resulting in
tremendous inequities.

n the past, working-age couple families without
children were slightly more likely to have two or
more earners than couple families with
children.174, 175 By the early 1980s, this had changed.
Couples with dependent children now have the
highest rates of labour force participation. In 2007, a
record 84.6% of two-parent families had two or more
earners. Over the same period, the percentage of
two-parent families with a single earner fell
substantially, from 37.2% to 14.4%. 176
There is relatively little variation across the provinces
with the percentage of dual-earner families with children ranging from a low of 82.9% in British Columbia
to a high of 92.3% in Prince Edward Island.
The pattern is quite different for couple families
without children. The percentage with two or more
income earners peaked in the late 1980s, declined
during most of the 1990s, recovering in recent years,
reaching 70.8% in 2007.
The number of female lone-parent families with
at least one earner (earners can be adults or older
children) trended downwards over the 1976 to 1996
period, falling from 72.3% at the beginning of the period to 61.6% at the end of the period. This percentage then began to increase and, by 2007, over eight in
ten female lone-parent families (83.5%) had at least
one earner, also a record level.

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Among all working-age families with children, the
proportion of two-parent families with a single earner
fell by 22 percentage points between 1976 and 2007.
By contrast, the share of two-parent families with two
or more earners grew by 12 percentage points, while
the share of male lone-parent families and female loneparent families with one or more earners grew by 2 and
8 percentage points respectively.

And so what?

The division between the world of paid work and the
world of caring and domestic labour has been blurred
by social and economic change. Historically, it was assumed that families could make ends meet by expanding
or contracting women’s unpaid labour within the home.
This is no longer the case. Economic realities are such
that the active participation of more than one income
earner is necessary to achieve family economic security.
Even after taking into consideration the expense of services such as child care, the economic “penalty” attached
to “non-participation” is considerable for families, and
particularly so for lone parents, both in the short and
long term. The risk of poverty among single-earner families is high. Older families that have relied on a single
income are particularly vulnerable as they approach retirement. Increasingly, other family members have come
to play an important role as additional income earners;
many older children living at home, for example, provide
important financial and social support to the family.177

ime and money are basic resources for any
family. Part-time work and shift work are two
types of work arrangements that some families
use to balance their requirements for time and money.
In 2009, 19% of all employees worked part-time,
clocking under 30 hours per week. Women are much
more likely to work part-time than men; 27% of women aged 15 and older work part-time compared to only
12% of men.178 Women have accounted for roughly
seven in ten part-time workers since the 1970s.
Research shows that women are still much more likely
than men to modify their patterns of work to accommodate family responsibilities.179 More than four in
ten women aged 25 to 44 working part-time (43%) did
so because of the need to care for their children or for
other family reasons.
By contrast, about 7% of male part-time workers were
working part-time to accommodate family demands.
Interestingly, the employment patterns of men tend to
be similar, regardless of their marital status or the presence of children. Men are more likely to make “special
arrangements” to restructure their work in response to
the work demands of a spouse or the special needs of
a child. “Work restructuring for men often consists of
‘picking up the slack’ when their partners were unavailable to handle family responsibilities,”180 but there is
some evidence that this is beginning to change.

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There has been a long-term increase in part-time work,
notably among young people. In 2009, nearly one-half
of young workers aged 15 to 24 years (47%) worked
part-time, largely in order to accommodate going to
school. More older workers are also working part-time
as a transition to or following retirement.181
Working shift also provides an opportunity for some
families to balance work and family obligations. In 2005,
28% of workers aged 19 to 64 years worked a shift schedule.182 One in four full-time workers (26%) worked shift,
while nearly one-half of part-time workers (48%) did so.
Men made up 63% of all full-time shift workers, whereas
women made up almost seven in ten (69%) part-time
shift workers. Rotating shifts and irregular schedules were
the most common types of shift work, accounting for
one-third of shift workers (both at 33%). One in five shift
workers (20%) worked regular evening or night shifts.

And so what?

Working part-time or a shift schedule can help parents
allocate more time for their children and ease the stress
of blending family life and work life. At the same time,
it can be a difficult choice for many, especially given
the economic “penalty” associated with part-time
work and the stress of working irregular hours. For example, part-time workers not only receive lower wages
relative to their full-time counterparts, they also give
up a host of other workplace supports and benefits that
are important to family economic security.

Note: Regular work is defined as working a 9 to 5 day-time shift. Shift work includes regular night and evening work, rotating and split shifts, casual / on-call work, or working irregular shifts.
Source: 2005 General Social Survey. Cara Williams (2008), "Work-life Balance of Shift Workers," Perspectives on Labour and Income, August 2008, Catalogue no. 75-001-X.

nother way to track changes in family working
time is to look at the hours that family
members spend in paid employment during
the week. Among all couple families, for example, total
weekly employment hours increased from an average
of 57.6 hours in 1976 to 64.8 hours in 2008 – the
equivalent of almost one full working day.183 The
increase in average hours reflects the sharp growth in
two-earner families over this period.
While the number of dual-earner couples increased
over this period, the total combined hours of employment among these families has remained relatively
stable since 1976, at roughly 77 hours per week. What
has changed is that women are contributing more
hours to employment, and their husbands or partners
are contributing less. In 2008, 59% of dual-earner
couples worked between 65 and 80 hours per week –
up from 54% in 1997. The average hours worked by
female spouses increased while those of male spouses
fell. In three-quarters of dual-earner couples (74%),
both spouses are now working full-time.
In 2008, female spouses contributed 45.3% of total
family employment hours, up from 43.8% in 1997.
Two-thirds of female spouses (65%) had weekly
employment hours that were essentially equivalent
(within 10%) to the employment hours of their male
partners, up from 60% in 1997. One in twenty contributed more than 55% of total family hours.
The convergence of hours of paid employment has
been linked to changes in the labour market, increasing levels of educational attainment among women,
and individual and family preferences. For example,
women with post-secondary degrees are much more
likely to work full-time than those with lower levels of

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education. The increase in the labour force participation and hours of employment among women with
children, and particularly those with young children,
has also resulted in a narrowing of the difference in
hours of paid employment between spouses.
The share of families with children wherein both
parents worked full-time, full-year has risen substantially since 1980, from 15% in 1980 to 32% in 2005.
By contrast, the share of families with one parent
working full-time, full-year and another outside of the
paid labour market fell by 15 percentage points over
this period, from 27% to 12%. 184 Roughly one-third
of two-parent families have one full-time, full-year
partner and another partner with a lower level of
attachment (part-time, part-year or both).

And so what?

The convergence of paid work hours within dualearner couples raises important questions about the
quality of work and family life and the division of
labour within families. Women are now working more
hours in paid employment. That said, the combination
of shorter hours, on average, and lower hourly earnings
still means that their earnings tend to be lower than
their male partners – although, this is beginning to
change among younger couples.
Research shows that issues of work-life balance are
an important concern for dual-earner families. For
example, about one in four men (24%) and four in ten
women (38%) in families with two full-time jobs and
preschool children report experiencing severe time
stress. Yet few would reduce their hours of employment if it meant less pay. Many people report feeling
overly busy but may not feel able to sacrifice financial
security for personal or family well-being.185

Percentage distribution of families with children across family work patterns, two-parent families (1980-2005)

40%
1980

1990

2000

2005

35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Both full year,
full-time

One full year,
full time other “partial”

Both "partial"

One full year full-time,
other not working

One “partial”,
other not working

Note: "Partial" is defined as someone who works part-year, part-time, or both.
Source: Sébastien LaRochelle-Côté, Philippe Gougeon, and Dominique Pinard (2009), “Changes in parental work time and earnings,”
Perspectives on Labour and Income, Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 75-001-X.

Hours of employment for families and spouses in dual-earner couples (1997 and 2008)
Hours of Employment per Week
Average
Family Hours

Under 65

hours

65 to 80

Over 80

percentage distribution

1997

77.2

19

54

26

2008

76.7

17

59

24

Average

Under 30

30 to 40

Over 40

Women

hours

1997

33.8

26

63

11

2008

34.7

21

68

10

1997

43.3

4

64

32

2008

42.0

5

68

27

percentage distribution

Men

Note: Dual-earner families include those with children and those without children.
Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey. Katherine Marshall (2009), "The Family Work Week," Perspective on Labour and Income, Catalogue no. 75-001-X.

bsences from work have increased in recent
years. In 2008, full-time employees missed an
average of 10.0 days of work per year, up from
7.4 days in 1997.186 Absences due to personal reasons,
including family responsibilities, help explain this
increase. Several factors account for these trends,
including an aging workforce, as well as the growing
share of mothers with young children in the labour
market. Women with preschoolers at home, for
instance, missed an average of 14.7 days in 2007, while
fathers with preschoolers missed 11.7 days.187
In a typical week, roughly one-quarter of employees
are away from work for all or part of the week. This has
changed little over the last thirty years. In 1976, about
26% of all female employees were absent from work in
a typical week, and in 2008, 27% were absent. There
was a slight decrease in the proportion of men absent
from work (26% in 1976 compared to 23% in 2008).
On average, in 2008, one in twenty women (5.5%)
missed days of work because of personal or family reasons. Fewer men were absent for these reasons (2.4%),
but this figure has increased over time.
Of all the hours taken off by women, about one-quarter (26%) were for personal or family reasons in 2008,
compared to 6% in 1976. For women, about 40% of
the increase in days lost is due to personal and family
reasons. For men, the corresponding figures are 3%
in 1976 and 7% in 2008. About 30% of the increase
in days lost among men is due to personal and family
reasons.188

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Workers reporting high levels of work-family conflict
arising from pressures at home are much more likely
than workers experiencing low levels of conflict to miss
days of work related to problems with child care, elder
care or mental and emotional fatigue. Linda Duxbury
and Chris Higgins estimate that the direct costs of absenteeism due to high levels of caregiver strain is over
$1 billion per year, and that the indirect costs amount
to another $1 to $2 billion.189
Duxbury and Higgins also report that workers in
Canada are much more likely to give precedence to
work demands over family demands. In 2001, one in
ten workers in large companies reported that their
family demands interfered with their ability to meet
demands at work to a significant degree. However,
nearly three in ten (28%) reported high interference
from work to family â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and another 38% reported
moderate interference. This group of employees is at
risk of burnout, depression, high levels of stress, and
poor physical health.190

And so what?

The impact of work-family conflict is circular: if
demanding work situations push workers to the limit,
spillover results in high stress, poor coping skills, and
insufficient time with family and friends which, in turn,
undermines work performance. Consequently, the best
way to improve employee attitudes, performance, and
retention, according to a growing body of research, is to
create better-quality jobs and more supportive workplaces, while keeping job demands at reasonable levels.191

ime and again, surveys reveal that employees
– especially women – are very interested in
flexible work arrangements. Research has
shown that stress at work is tied not only to the actual
number of hours worked, but also to the time and the
place of paid employment. Policies that support
flex-time, compressed work weeks, job sharing,
working at home, telework, and reduced work weeks
with prorated benefits can enhance the quality of work
and family life for both employees and employers alike.

However, access to these types of benefits is largely a
function of job type, industry, firm size, and unionization. For example, in 2008, only one in five mothers
(20%) who received Employment Insurance (EI) /
Québec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP) benefits after
the birth of their child also received an employer topup.195 The chances of receiving a top up were higher
among public sector workers, those working for a
large company, Quebec workers, and those earning an
hourly wage in excess of $20 or more per hour.196

The proportion of workers with access to flex-time
has been growing. The 1995 Survey of Work Arrangements found that flex-time was available to only one
in four Canadian workers, while one in five worked
part-time, and one in 10 had access to telework.192 By
2005, over one-third of employees (37%) reported that
they were able to vary their working hours to some
degree. Men were more likely to work flexible hours
than women (39% versus 34%). Reduced work weeks
(e.g. job-sharing, work-sharing) and compressed work
weeks were not widespread, with each being reported
by fewer than one in ten workers. Just over one-quarter
(27%) reported working at home on a regular basis,
but most of these hours were in the form of unpaid
overtime.193

This suggests that work-life policies tend to be the purview of a select group of workers who have the leverage
to bargain with their employers for flexible work
arrangements. Their position is wholly different from
employees engaged in non-standard, low-wage work
that is organized to maximize employer flexibility.

Some employees have additional access to non-wage
benefits such as supplemental medical insurance,
disability insurance, retirement plans and personal or
family support programs. In 2005, for example, over
one in three (36%) had access to at least one personal
or family support program through their employer.194

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And so what?

Flexible working arrangements afford employees
greater control over their work and family lives, often
resulting in reduced work-family conflict, improved
morale, higher employee retention, increased productivity, and lower absenteeism.197 Working part-time
and having flex-time options (such as choosing when
to begin and end the work day) are particularly effective in reducing time stress among women and men.198
From the perspective of business, research from the
Conference Board of Canada has shown that work-life
programs have been “somewhat” or “very” effective in
increasing employee morale (62%); reducing employee
stress (56%); reducing absenteeism (43%); and increasing productivity (32%).199

Percentage of employees working alternative work arrangements, by sex (2005)
40%
35

39.1
Men

Women

34.4
30.3

30
25.3

25
20
15

10.2

10

8.5

5.7

5.5

5
0
Flexible hours

Saturdays or Sundays

Reduced work week

Compressed work week

Note: Some industries are excluded from the survey, such as public administration.
Source: Statistics Canada, 2005 Workplace and Employee Survey. Statistics Canada (2009), Canadian Labour Market at a Glance, Catalogue no. 71-222-X.

Percentage of employees participating in selected non-wage benefits and family support programs
through their employers (2005)

35.6%

At least one personal or
family support program

32.8%

Employer-sponsored
pension plan

40.6%

Medical, life, disability or
dental insurance plans

18.4%

Group registered
retirement savings plan

Note: Some industries are excluded from the survey, such as public administration.
Source: Statistics Canada, 2005 Workplace and Employee Survey. Statistics Canada (2009), Canadian Labour Market at a Glance, Catalogue no. 71-222-X.

ge 65 remains an important marker in
defining the transition from paid employment
to post-retirement life. Currently, most
Canadians retire before 65 years, the point at which
they are eligible for full income benefits. In 2008, the
median age of retirement for women and men was
60.6 and 61.3 years respectively.200

A recent Statistics Canada survey indicates that most
of today’s older workers are planning to retire on or
before the age of 65. In 2007, 22% of Canadians aged
45 to 59 years reported that they planned to retire
before age 60, while 25% stated that they hoped to
retire between the ages of 60 and 64 years, and another
25% at age 65. Just 4% stated that they are planning to
retire after the age of 65.201
A relatively large group of Canadians are uncertain
about when they will retire. In 2007, 14% of those
aged 45 to 59 years stated that they didn’t know when
they might retire – another 11% stated they didn’t
plan to retire at all. This was especially true among
those with low or modest financial resources, lack of
access to workplace pensions, and the self employed.202
There is some indication that some near-retirees are
pushing back their retirement plans. For example,
“[b]etween 1991 and 2007, the proportion of nearretirees aged 45 to 49 planning on retiring before age
60 decreased by about 4 percentage points, while the
share planning on retiring at age 65 or older increased
by about 7 percentage points.”203 Similar patterns are
evident among those aged 50 to 54 years.
As well, after years of decline, labour force participation among older men is rebounding.204 The participation rate among men aged 55 to 64 years increased by
10 percentage points between 1995 and 2009, from

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58% to 68%. The pattern was different among women
wherein a constant increase in their labour force participation has been experienced across all age groups.
Among women aged 55 to 64 years, labour force
participation increased by 17 percentage points, going
from 39% in 1995 to 56% in 2009.
Indeed, the idea of retirement at a fixed point in time is
being challenged as a growing group of older Canadians
is moving back and forth between family and community
activities and the paid labour market. In 2002, just over
one-fifth (22%) of recent retirees took paid employment
after formally retiring. Post-retirement employment is
most common among individuals who initially retired in
their fifties. Good health, post-secondary education and/
or past experience as a professional or manager are also associated with labour market participation post-retirement.
While financial considerations were important for many,
non-financial reasons also figured prominently for those
working after retirement (i.e., did not like retirement,
enjoyed work, pressure from a previous employer).205

And so what?

Population aging, increases in the health and longevity
of seniors, and concerns about the adequacy of retirement savings and pension benefits are some of the
factors transforming the experience of retirement. No
longer is retirement seen as a discrete period of the life
course. The rise in the population of older workers – a
trend established even before the 2008-09 recession
– as well as the growing group of “retirees” who are
moving back and forth between paid work, community work and family life has created an understanding
of retirement as a much more fluid and dynamic phase
of the life course. New perspectives on retirement and
approaches to retirement policy are needed to ensure
the well-being of seniors and their families – taking
into account the different pathways to retirement.

he steady increase in the number of female
workers, and the resulting growth in dualincome families, has made the timing of
retirement much more complex than just a few decades
ago. Research suggests that men and women in dualearner families are pursuing different retirement patterns
â&#x20AC;&#x201C; despite the stated preference for retiring together.
A 2008 study found that only three in ten (29%)
spouses in dual-earner couples206 retired within two
years of each other, a proportion that has been declining since the mid 1980s.207 The most common pattern
was for women to retire after their male partners: in
15% of couples, women retired two to four years later,
and in over one-quarter of couples (28%), women
retired five or more years later. In only 28% of couples
did female spouses retire before their male partners.
While the prevalence of joint retirement among dual-earner couples has declined, couples may make other changes
in their work lives, such as reducing employment hours
upon the retirement of a spouse. In 2006, 11% of older
male workers and 28% of older female workers worked
part-time, mostly by choice (64% and 67% respectively).208
A number of family factors influence the timing and
pattern of retirement: the age and health status of
each spouse, the needs of family members, financial
resources, and the quality of family relationships. For
example, because men are typically older than their
female partners, men in dual-earner families usually are
the first to retire. The onset of disability or elder care
responsibilities are other major factors in shaping the
pattern and timing of retirement within families.

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Pre-retirement family finances profoundly influence
retirement pathways. The loss of a job often precipitates early retirement. In such cases, the probability of
the other spouse retiring five or more years after his
or her spouse increases substantially. Male and female
workers with high average individual earnings are
more likely to retire together than workers with lower
average earnings.209
According to the 2007 General Social Survey, most
Canadians (69%) aged 45 to 59 years believe that their
retirement incomes will be adequate or more than
adequate.210 Couple families were much more likely to
think so than singles (72% compared to 55%). Similarly, those in excellent health had a more positive outlook than those in fair or poor health (78% compared
to 50%), and those covered by workplace pensions
were more positive than those without coverage (74%
compared to 60%). That said, one-third of Canadians
aged 45 to 59 years (32%) expressed concerns about
their future financial security.

And so what?

Too often, retirement transitions have been discussed
from the perspective of an individual (male) retiree.
With the dramatic rise in womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s labour market
participation, the process, timing and experience of
retirement has been transformed. The family context
is critically important in understanding how individuals and families navigate this period of transition
and the impact of those decisions on subsequent family activities and relationships as well as retirement
outcomes.

ver the past three decades, the average
after-tax income of families of two or more
persons increased by 23.3%, from $58,300 in
1976 to $71,900 in 2007.211 But the path to higher
family income over this period was uneven.
Between 1976 and 1997, there was little overall change
in average after-tax income; family incomes at the end
of the period were actually 3.3% below incomes at the
beginning of the period. Two recessions, one in the
early 1980s and one in the early 1990s, put considerable
downward pressure on the incomes of Canadian families.
The period from 1997 to 2007, on the other hand,
was marked by a strong 27.5% advance in family
after-tax income, with incomes rising from $56,400 to
$71,900.212 In 2007, the highest after-tax incomes for
families were in Alberta ($86,600) and the lowest in
New Brunswick ($57,800).
Families derive their incomes from a variety of sources.
For most, especially those of working-age, the main
source of income is employment. On that score, the
income from earnings, investment and private retirement income – or market income – was the main
contributor to the increase in after-tax income. After
more than a decade of stagnation or decline, average
market income of families of two or more persons rose
by 24.7% – from $62,000 to $77,300 – between 1997
and 2007.
Among families whose main income earner was under
65 years of age, average market income increased by
24.7% between 1997 and 2007 (from $67,500 to
$84,200), while elderly families whose main income

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recipient was over age 65 experienced an increase of
33.1% (from $29,000 to $38,600) over this same period.
The dollar amount of government transfers to families of two or more averaged $5,300 in the year 1976,
peaked at $9,200 in 1993 (during the recession), slipped
to $8,000 by 2000, and rose again to $9,000 by 2007.
The average amount of income taxes paid per family
increased from $11,000 in 1976 to a peak of $15,600
in 2000, and then decreased to $14,400 in 2007. On
average, income taxes collected from families in 2007
were about $5,400 ($14,400 minus $9,000) greater
than the transfers received by families. Income taxes
paid were larger than the transfers received in all provinces except in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince
Edward Island and New Brunswick.

And so what?

The statistics presented here do not capture the impact
of the recession on Canadian families. Over 400,000
people lost their jobs between October 2008 and July
2009, and thousands more experienced a reduction
of hours or change in employment status. Like the
recession in the early 1990s, recent immigrants, young
people and those with lower levels of education experienced the heaviest job losses.213 And like the 1991
recession, it is expected that there will be a decline in
market and after-tax incomes.
Since the mid-1990s economic growth in Canada has
been robust, with positive effects on the standards of living
of Canadians. The recession of 2009 will likely erase some
of these gains. It could be many years before we return to
pre-recessionary levels of employment and income.214

anadian families on average enjoy a higher
standard of living today than they did thirty
years ago. Elderly families, in particular, have
enjoyed important gains in average after-tax income.
The progress among working-age families, however,
has been more uneven. It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t until the late 1990s
that average incomes began to significantly appreciate.
These gains are now at risk in the aftermath of the
2008-09 recession, as uncertainty in the labour market
and high levels of household indebtedness challenge
family economic security.
The after-income tax incomes of elderly couples (65
years and over) experienced a significant upward trend
during the 1976 to 2007 period. Average incomes grew
by 62% over the entire period, rising from $32,600
in 1976 to $52,700 in 2007.215 In particular, there
was notable growth in incomes during the 1980s and
again, between 1997 and 2007.
The after-income tax income of working-age couples
(18 to 64 years) with children increased between 1976
and 2007 as well, but all of the growth was concentrated in the last decade. Average after-tax incomes
stagnated through the 1980s, and fell during the recession of the early 1990s, even as women increased their
labour market participation and the percentage of
dual earner couples with children grew (from 62% in
1976 to over 75% by the late 1980s). Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s labour
market participation was critical to preventing further
erosion of household incomes.

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It was only in 1998 that the average incomes of couple
families with children finally exceeded the level
recorded in 1976. The subsequent period up to 2007
resulted in a major improvement, as after-tax incomes
increased from $66,400 in 1998 to $82,000 in 2007,
the result of strong growth in average hourly wages and
weekly hours worked.216
Working-age couples without children followed a
similar path. The average income of $55,000 in 1976
slipped to $53,200 by the middle of the 1990s but
then grew steadily to $70,000 by 2007.

And so what?

Elderly couples in Canada experienced strong after-tax
income growth over the last three decades, notably
through the 1980s and the 2000s. Guaranteed Income
Supplement, Old Age Security, and the Canadian/
Quebec Pension Plan have played a key role in improving incomes. Income from private pensions and savings
also increased over the past three decades, particularly
as dual earner couples entered their retirement years.
As a result, incomes have risen and poverty rates
among senior couples have fallen.
Incomes among working-age couples, however, stagnated through the 1976-1996 period, increasing then
rolling back with each recession. The buoyant labour
market since 1996 helped to turn their financial situation
around as high rates of employment and long hours resulted in important gains for many working-age families.

s women’s earning power has increased, the
incomes of single- and dual-earner families
have grown further apart.

In 1976, the average after-tax income of single-earner
couples with children was $51,900, while the average
of couples with two earners was $66,000 – a difference
of $14,100. Three decades later, in 2007, the average
after-tax income of single-earner couples was somewhat higher than in 1976 ($58,700), while the incomes of two-earner couples were considerably higher,
averaging $81,400, a difference of $22,700.
A similar pattern is found with single- and dual-earner
couples without children. The difference in their average after tax income in 1976 was $16,500 and in 2007,
$21,100.
Single-earner households face particular challenges.
For example, they are much less likely than two-earner
households to have the resources necessary to deal
with a spell of unemployment or disability. And singleearner households headed by women face additional
obstacles since women, on average, still earn about
20% less than men, and are more likely to be working
in part-time or precarious jobs.217

Because single-earner couples tend to have lower
incomes, they receive more from government transfers

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than two-earner couples, and pay less in income taxes.
As a result, the income differences between one- and
two-earner couples are tempered by the redistributive
effects of Canada’s tax and transfer payment systems.
Overall, family incomes have been more polarized.
Some dual-earner couples – typically those with high
levels of education and full-time employment – have
gained enormously from the combined earnings
of two high income spouses. Unlike 20 or 30 years
ago, well-educated men and women today are much
more likely to marry one another and form families
where both partners have a high probability of being
employed in well-paying jobs. Less educated couples,
by contrast, face a greater risk of unemployment and
lower salaries when they are employed.218

And so what?

The general increase in the number of income earners
per family has no doubt contributed to higher family
incomes over the past several decades. Two incomes
from the job market provide a higher material standard
of living for families. Two incomes provide greater protection against the threat of unemployment and labour
market change. While two incomes are not a guarantee
against family and child poverty, reliance on a single
income carries a higher risk of economic insecurity,
particularly as increases in household spending and
growing debt loads are outpacing gains in income.219

olstered by a rise in educational attainment
and earnings power, women, on average, are
contributing more to family income. In fact, a
growing number of women are the primary earners
within their families. In 1976, 12% of women in
dual-income couples earned more than their husband
or common-law partner. By 2007, this had increased
to 28%. In particular, the percentage of women
earning more than their spouse increased substantially
through the recessionary periods of the early 1980s
and early 1990s.
A comparable trend is found among single-earner
couples. In 1976, women were the sole-earners in 5%
of single-earner couples, but by 2007, this had increased to 28%.
Several characteristics distinguish women who earn
more than their spouses from women who earn less
than their spouses.220 Women earning more tend to
be older – on average by about two years – and they
are more likely to hold a university degree. They more
often have managerial positions, and work full-time.
Women who earn more than their spouse are also
more likely to have a husband or partner who recently
experienced a spell of unemployment.
Women earning more than their spouse are less likely to
have young children at home. Only 15% of these women
had preschoolers at home compared to almost onequarter of wives who earned less than their husbands.
“While most primary-earner wives had more than
twice the earnings of their spouses in 2003, they did

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not match the earning power of primary-earner husbands.”221 Because women tend to have lower hourly
earnings and relatively shorter work weeks compared
to men, the average after-tax incomes of families in
which women are the primary earners lags behind that
of families in which men are the primary earners.

And so what?

The increased earnings of women relative to their
spouses has many implications for family functioning
and family dynamics, including how spouses divide
unpaid household labour and care responsibilities,
how decisions are taken with respect to household
expenditures and investments, and who takes parental
leave upon the birth of a child.
For example, as women’s income rises, so too does the
time that men spend in housework. There tends to be
a much more equitable division of domestic labour in
households where women devote significant hours to
paid labour, and particularly so, where women are the
primary income earners.222 Women with significant
earnings are also more likely to influence household
expenditures. High income households in which
the female partner is the main earner are twice as
likely, for instance, to purchase domestic services as
households in which the male partner is the primary
breadwinner.223
The gradual convergence of hours and earnings of men
and women in dual-earner families – and the growth
in the proportion of couple families where women are
the primary earners – is further evidence of changing
roles within the family.

he economic vulnerability of lone-parent
families – those headed by mothers, in
particular – is well documented. Lone-mother
families are significantly more likely than other family
types to be poor, and more likely to receive social
assistance. Even as women started to enter the labour
force in greater numbers through the 1970s and 1980s,
lone-parent mothers were being left behind. The high
cost of housing and lack of affordable child care were
– and continue to be – huge barriers to economic security.
Since the mid 1990s, the gap in the economic fortunes
of lone-parent families and couple families has started
to narrow. The average after-tax income of lone-parent
families has grown significantly, particularly female
lone-parent families.
Over the period from 1976 to 2007, the average aftertax income of male lone-parent and female lone-parent
families grew by 9.7% and 40.1%, respectively.224
Almost all of the income growth was experienced
after 1998.
Even with the important gains made by female loneparent households, on average, their incomes remain
considerably lower than those of male lone-parent
households, although this difference has narrowed
over time. In 2007, female lone-parent families had an
average after-tax income of $39,500, or about 76% of
male lone-parent families ($52,100).
Much of the improvement in incomes of female loneparent families is due to their growing rate of labour
force participation, increased hours and weeks of employment, and greater earning power stemming from
higher levels of education.225

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As a group, today’s lone-parents are older and have
higher levels of educational attainment than in the
past. Most lone-parent mothers, for example, are in
their late 30s and 40s (61% in 2006 compared with
43% of the total in 1981). The percentage of these
mothers completing grade 12 increased from 51% in
1981 to 82% in 2006, and the percentage with at least
some post-secondary education increased from 29% in
1981 to 44% in 2006.
Given these income trends, it is not surprising that the
poverty rate of lone-parent families has declined markedly. The poverty rate for male lone-parent families
dipped from 18.1% in 1976 to 10.8% by 2007. The
poverty rate for female lone-parent families fell from
53.9% in 1976 to 23.6% in 2007, as measured by the
after-tax Low-income Cut-off.

And so what?

There is some doubt whether the financial situation of
lone-parent families, and in particular, female loneparent families, can improve significantly beyond
their current levels. Labour force participation rates of
lone-parent mothers are currently high, and they may
have reached their maximum. Given the small supply
of affordable quality child care and the patchwork of
community supports that exists across Canada, it will
remain very difficult for lone parents to secure the supports that they need to pursue post-secondary education and training or to participate in the labour market.
“[T]he revolution in female education levels that divides the post-war generations from their predecessors
is now reaching maturity…The implication is that in the
absence of other policy or behavioural changes, future
earnings gains and the associated decline in single
mothers’ low-income rates are likely to be modest.” 226

ver one-third of Canadian households are
comprised of individuals living on their own
or with someone to whom they are not
related. In statistical language, they are referred to as
“unattached individuals”, even though their connections
to family may be strong. A diverse group, unattached
individuals include students living away from home,
young working adults living on their own, noncustodial parents living on their own following a
divorce or separation, or elderly widows. Three-quarters
of unattached individuals are under 65 years of age.

Among unattached individuals, several distinct income
trends over the last three decades are evident. First, as
is the case with elderly couples, the incomes of elderly
unattached individuals have grown steadily. Between
1976 and 2007, the average after-tax income of unattached men aged 65 and over improved by 40.3%,
reaching $31,000, while the incomes of unattached
women aged 65 and over grew by 70.9%, reaching
$25,800.227 These improvements reflect gains from
“market” sources (private pensions, investment income
and earnings), as well as significant increases in transfer
payments received through government programs.
The experience of unattached individuals under the age
of 65 has been very different. Their average after-tax
incomes were only slightly higher in 2007 than in 1976.
For many years through this period, unattached individuals as a group have experienced tremendous economic hardship. Poverty rates have remained very high,
with effectively no change among unattached women,
and higher rates among unattached men.228 “By 2005,
there were as many low income persons from this group
[unattached individuals aged 18 to 64] as from any

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other group (e.g. persons in economic families aged 1864, elderly persons in economic families, etc.).”229
Among non-elderly unattached individuals aged 18
to 64, those facing the greatest risk of persistent low
income include the unemployed, members of visible
minority groups, high school leavers, those reporting
work-related activity limitations, and older adults aged
45 to 64. There is also a large economic gap between
Aboriginal peoples – those living in families and
unattached individuals – and non-Aboriginal peoples,
across all indicators of economic security.230

And so what?

Effective income security programs have been essential in tackling historically high rates of poverty and
economic disadvantage among seniors in Canada. By
contrast, inadequate income security programs are a
significant reason as to why working-age Canadians
– and unattached individuals, in particular – have
experienced such high levels of economic insecurity.
Income supports for working-age singles have weakened since the mid 1990s. Certain key social programs
for working age people now provide less income support to the disadvantaged than they did in the past.
“Welfare benefits, expressed in constant dollars, were
significantly lower for all four types of welfare recipients in 2007 than in 1986. Employment insurance in
2008 was less generous, in terms of required qualification period and duration of benefits, than in 1981.”231
While individuals who were able to secure employment through the boom years experienced modest
income improvement, others forced to rely on social
assistance experienced continuing hardship.

etween 1996 and 2006, Canada’s labour force
increased by 2.3 million, with roughly one-half
of this increase attributable to the 1.1 million
immigrants who arrived in Canada during the period
and joined the country’s workforce. Canada’s reliance
on immigration for labour force growth is up sharply
from the 1980s, and in coming decades is expected to
account for all of the country’s net labour force growth.
Canada has been successful in attracting immigrants
with high levels of skill and education. In 2006, for
example, the percentage of recent immigrants with a
university degree was twice as high as the Canadianborn population.232 In spite of this, research indicates
that recent immigrants to Canada have elevated levels of
unemployment, and often have difficulties finding employment commensurate with their skills and education.
Recent immigrants generally have poorer labour
market outcomes relative to Canadian-born workers,
as well as to earlier generations of immigrants. Several
factors contribute to the difficulties experienced by
newcomers, including problems with the recognition of credentials attained abroad, proficiency in
official languages, declining returns on foreign work
experience, and generally deteriorating labour market
outcomes for all new labour market entrants.233
The 2006 Census shows that the median income of immigrant families in 2005 (defined as families in which
the husband, parent, or survey reference person was an
immigrant to Canada) was 8% lower than the median
income of “non-immigrant” families ($67,874 compared to $62,242). Among recent immigrants (within
five years of the Census), median family income was
$43,932, or 35% less than non-immigrant families.

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Generally, new immigrants to Canada have high rates
of low-income. As their time in Canada increases,
these rates have tended to fall, eventually coming to
match the levels found among the Canadian-born
population. This pattern was certainly evident thirtyyears ago. In 1980, the low-income rate among recent
immigrants was 24.6%, much higher than that of the
Canadian-born population (17.2%). However, among
immigrants who had been in Canada for more than
10 years, the low-income rate had fallen to a level
below that of the Canadian-born population.
Today’s recent immigrants have a rate of low-income
nearly three times higher than the Canadian-born
population (36% compared to 13% in 2005), and
these rates appear to remain elevated for a much
longer period after arrival in Canada. Indeed, poverty
rates have been rising among immigrants while they
have been falling among the Canadian-born.234

And so what?

Upon arrival in Canada, immigrants experience a period of transition as they seek to establish themselves
in their new home. Finding a place to live, learning
about and adapting to life in Canada, and finding
gainful employment: these are among the many dimensions that define a successful transition. The difficulties newcomers face in the Canadian job market is
an important public policy issue, especially when the
result is a vast underutilization of immigrant workers’ skills and experience, increasing levels of earnings
inequality and heightened levels of income insecurity
among immigrants and their families.235

Immigrants by years since immigration
*Rate of low income has been calculated using the before tax Low-income Cut-off (LICO)
Source: Garnett Picot, Yuqian Lu and Feng Hou (2009), â&#x20AC;&#x153;Immigrant low-income rates: The role of market income and government transfers,â&#x20AC;?
Perspectives on Labour and Income, Statistics Canada, Catalogue no. 75-001-X, December 2009.

Median family income, by immigration status and family type* (2005)
All families

Couples

Male lone
parents

Female lone
parents

Non-immigrants

$67,900

$74,100

$51,700

$36,200

Immigrants

62,200

66,800

53,300

39,400

arrived 2001-2004

43,900

46,900

33,600

23,900

arrived 1996-2000

56,300

61,500

39,100

30,100

* economic families of two or more persons, immigration status of husband, parent, or reference person
Source: Statistics Canada, 2006 Census of Population (Topic based tabulations)

ne of the reasons why many young people in
Canada are waiting longer to leave home is
that they are going to school for longer periods
of time. Taking more time to obtain post-secondary
credentials – investing in one’s own “human capital” –
has pushed back the age at which children leave home,
partner or marry, and have children of their own.

had median earnings of $50,150, about 80% of the
median earnings of men with a similar level of education ($62,700). By contrast, the earning gap was much
larger between women and men with less than a high
school education (65%), with a high school diploma
(76%), with a trade certificate or diploma (62%), or
with a college certificate or diploma (73%).

In today’s labour market, access to good paying jobs
and secure employment is often predicated on having
higher levels of educational attainment. Indeed, two
out of three jobs now require more than a high school
education,236 and while there are exceptions,237 higher
education generally leads to higher income.

And so what?

In 2005, the median earnings of full-time, full-year
workers aged 25 to 34, whose highest level of education was high school, was $32,300. Compared to these
high school graduates, young adults with a trades
certificate or diploma had median earnings of $34,500,
and those with a college degree or certificate had median earnings of $36,700. Young adults with a university degree at the bachelor’s level had median earnings
of $46,100, 43% higher than the median earnings of
high school graduates aged 25 to 34.
The economic advantage accruing from higher education appears to increase as earners get older, reflecting
the greater opportunities that post-secondary credentials
provide for upward wage mobility. Among individuals
between the ages of 55 and 64, who were employed fulltime full-year, those with a university degree had median
earnings of $62,200 – 65% higher than the median earnings of those with a high school diploma.
Higher education also appears to narrow the earnings
gap between women and men. Full-time, full-year
female workers aged 25 to 64 with a bachelor degree

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The increasing cost of post-secondary education in
Canada continues to raise important issues of access
and affordability. In 2009/10, undergraduate university tuition fees averaged $4,917, roughly three times
higher than in the early 1990s. Additional mandatory
fees (which averaged $749 in 2009/10), the rising
costs of educational supplies, and the general increase
in costs of living have made the financing of postsecondary education a considerable challenge for many
individuals and families. A recent Statistics Canada
study found that “well over one-half (57%) of the
graduating class of 2005 had student loans, up from
49% 10 years earlier,” and that “average student debt
on graduation rose from $15,200 to $18,800 during
the same decade.”238
While government programs such as the Canada
Education Savings Grant (CESG) and Registered
Education Savings Plans (RESPs) have encouraged
families to save for their children’s education, many
nevertheless have difficulty doing so. Families carrying
high debt loads, for example, are less likely to have the
financial capacity to set money aside for postsecondary
education.239 As a result, many more young people are
working while attending school, extending their time
at school. The high cost of post-secondary education
is an important reason behind the delayed transition
to full-time employment and the establishment of
independent households among young people.

t took ten years for family incomes to recoup the
losses experienced during the recession of the early
1990s. Over the past decade, incomes have continued
to increase. What is notable over this time is that families
across the income spectrum have experienced gains but
these gains have not been shared evenly among all
Canadian families. While Canada’s system of income
transfer programs and income taxes has the effect of
re-distributing incomes more equitably, large differences
still separate low-, middle-, and high-income families.

The real adjusted income of the top 20% of families – the
top quintile – increased much more rapidly than that of
the other four quintiles.240 For example, after-tax income
of the top quintile rose by 31.0% between 1989 and
2007, two peak years in the business cycle. The other
four income groups experienced more modest gains.
The 20% of families with the lowest adjusted after-tax
income saw an increase of 14.2% from $14,100 in 1989
to $16,100 in 2007, while families in the second quintile
experienced a gain of 14.1% from $23,400 to $26,700.
Families in the third and fourth quintiles saw their aftertax incomes increase by 17.5% and 20.5%, respectively,
between 1989 and 2007. Stated in another way, the
incomes of families in the top 20% were increasing twice
as fast as those in the bottom two quintiles (at 31%).
Trends in the quintile distribution of market income
were even more skewed towards the top quintile.
Adjusted market incomes of the top quintile families
grew four times as fast as the incomes of families in the
lowest 20% (29.4% compared to 7.5%).

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Another way to measure the relationship between
families at the top and bottom of the income scale is
to look at the ratio of their incomes. In 2007, the 20%
of families with the highest adjusted after-tax income
had, on average, 4.9 times the adjusted after-tax income as those in the bottom 20%. In other words, for
every dollar of income received by the lowest quintile,
the highest quintile received almost five dollars. In
1989, the ratio was 4.2.
The gap in market incomes between families at the
top and bottom of the income distribution was even
greater, at 8.2 in 1989, rising to 9.9 in 2007.

And so what?

Income differences have impacts far beyond consumer
lifestyles. Large gaps in income and wealth have a number of negative implications for society. “Not only do
they affect the wellbeing of those who do not benefit
from the creation of wealth, but inequalities can also
affect the wellbeing of the entire population through
lessened social cohesion, increases in crime or, more
generally, widespread discontent.”241
The recent World Health Organization (WHO)
Commission on the Social Determinants of Health
concludes that “[i]n countries at all levels of income,
health and illness follow a social gradient: the lower
the socioeconomic position, the worse the health.”242
Canadian research confirms the very strong association between income and wealth and good health –
across a range of outcomes,243 including life expectancy.244

Percentage change of adjusted market and after-tax income of families, by adjusted after-tax income quintile (1989-2007)

35%

market income

after-tax income

31.0

29.4

30
25
20.5

20

17.5
14.2

15
10

14.2

14.1

7.8

7.5

5

3.1

0
Lowest quintile

Second quintile

Third quintile

Fourth quintile

Highest quintile

Note: These income figures have been adjusted to take into account family size and the economies of scale present in larger families.
Source: Statistics Canada, Income Trends in Canada 1976-2007, Catalogue no. 13F0022XIE

Adjusted after-tax income among economic families by adjusted after-tax income quintile, by Province (2007)
CAN

NL

PE

NS

NB

QC

ON

MB

SK

AB

BC

Lowest quintile

$16,100

$15,400

$17,100

$15,000

$14,000

$15,900

$16,500

$15,000

$14,000

$19,000

$15,700

Second quintile

26,700

23,100

24,800

24,400

23,800

24,700

27,600

25,100

25,100

31,800

27,100

Third quintile

35,500

31,200

30,600

32,400

31,000

32,100

36,900

33,500

34,500

42,100

36,900

Fourth quintile

46,500

41,800

39,300

41,500

40,800

41,200

48,100

43,000

45,400

56,100

47,100

Highest quintile

78,200

64,700

58,400

65,400

62,000

66,600

81,900

71,900

73,800

94,700

79,100

4.9

4.2

3.4

4.4

4.4

4.2

5.0

4.8

5.3

5.0

5.0

Ratio top to bottom
quintile

Note: These income figures have been adjusted to take into account family size and the economies of scale present in larger families.
Source: Statistics Canada, Income Trends in Canada 1976-2007, Catalogue no. 13F0022XIE

he concept of “the middle class” is a popular
one, and is frequently invoked in discussions
about the impact of new policies, taxes, or
laws. In spite of its common usage, there is no agreed
upon or standard definition of the term.245 Often,
“middle class” is simply meant to signify middle
income. But here too, there are a variety of ways to
define and measure middle income families. So what
constitutes a middle income family in Canada?
There is, of course, that one family in Canada that is
truly “in the middle” of the income distribution, where
one-half of all families brings in less money and the
other half brings in more. The income of that “middle”
family is referred to as the median income, and in
2007, it was $61,800, about 16% higher than it was
in 1976, after adjusting for inflation. The recessions of
the early 1980s and early 1990s reduced median family income by about $4,000 to $5,000, and with each
downturn, several years passed before median income
returned to its pre-recession level.
Another way to examine the middle income class is to
simply focus on the 60% of families who are neither
the poorest 20%, nor the richest 20%. This broadly
defined “middle class” is a diverse group, and in 2007,
included families with after-tax incomes as low as
$37,101 or as high as $97,600.
Together, these middle income families received 60.9%
of all the government transfers in 2007, compared to
50.9% in 1976. They also paid about 41.6% of all the
income taxes collected, which is down from 49.2%
in 1976. Although they now receive a bigger share of
transfers, and contribute a smaller share to total income
taxes paid, these middle income families nonetheless received a smaller share of market income in 2007 than in
1976 (50.3% compared to 54.9%) and a smaller share

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of after-tax income (53.0% compared to 55.5%).
At the same time, families in the top income quintile
increased their share of market income by 4.7 percentage points (from 42.0% in 1976 to 46.7% in 2007),
while the income share of the bottom quintile experienced no change (at roughly 3% in 1976 and in 2007).
The top quintile’s share of after-tax income increased
by 2.1 percentage points between 1976 and 2007 to
39.7%, while the bottom quintile experienced a small
gain of 0.4 percentage points to 7.3%. The lion’s share
of the gain was experienced in recent years.

And so what?

Although median family income is higher today than
it was three decades ago, a number of studies, using a
variety of definitions and methods, have shown that the
“middle class” is facing considerable financial pressure,
even though their work time has increased substantially.
Another Statistics Canada study reports similar findings. This study shows that, after remaining stable
for several decades, “family after-tax-income inequality rose in the 1990s, settling at a higher level in the
2000s.” 246 At the same time, the share of middle-income families (defined as incomes falling within 75%
to 150% of median income) was reduced and the share
of low- and high-income families grew larger. “These
trends appear to have been driven by rising inequalities in income received from market sources (wages,
salaries, self-employment income, private pensions and
investment income) among families.”247
Equally important, this study notes that the tax-transfer system was not up to the task of mitigating the impact of growing market inequality. We can expect that
income inequality will increase again in the aftermath
of the 2008-09 recession.

s economic conditions improve, poverty rates
generally decline. The poverty rate – as
measured by Statistics Canada's after-tax Low
Income Cut-off (AT LICO) – rose from 10.2% in
1989, the high point of the last economic cycle, to
15.2% in 1996.248 Subsequently, the rate declined
slowly until 2007, reaching 9.2%, after several years of
strong economic growth.249
Even as Canada experienced positive economic
conditions, some families still struggled economically.
There has been little change in the long run aggregate
low income rate over the past 25 years (measured at
business cycle peaks).250 Poverty rates among children
and working-age adults aged 18 to 64 years have been
wedged above the 10% mark, only falling below this
level in 2007.
The poverty rate for adults aged 18 to 64 was 9.3% in
1989 and 9.9% in 2007, with a peak of 15.2% in 1997.
Children’s rate of poverty was 11.9% in 1989, rising to
18.4% in 1996, and falling to 9.5% in 2007. By contrast, the poverty rate among seniors has substantially
improved, falling from roughly one in five in 1980
to one in ten in 1989 to one in twenty by 2007. The
drop in the rate of poverty among seniors in Canada
has been a real success story, demonstrating the impact
that strong income support programs can have.
Using longitudinal surveys, which track the same people over longer periods, Statistics Canada has shown
that the experience of low-income is much more common than the annual poverty rate would suggest. During the six-year period spanning 2002-2007, one in five
Canadians – roughly 6 million people – experienced
at least one year of low-income. Forty percent of these
individuals had low incomes in only one of the six

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years and 60% in at least two of the six years (although
not necessarily consecutive years).251
A relatively small percentage (11%) lived in low-income in each of the six years, although this represents a
very significant 529,000 people. Entry and exit to lowincome was largely associated with change in employment earnings or other income, but changing family
status was also important – accounting for between
one-quarter to one-third of the exits from low-income.

And so what?

While poverty may be a temporary situation for many,
its consequences or impacts may be far from inconsequential. Among work age adults, even short episodes
of low-income can compromise longer-term security,
as when an unemployed worker replaces the loss of a
good paying job with a poor paying one.
For children living in poor families, low income simply
fails to provide the resources necessary for good health
and developmental outcomes. Low income is a significant predicator of low infant birth weight, increased
infant mortality, and overall poor child health and
development. Among adults, economic deprivation is a
major cause of poor adult physical health, with strong
links to chronic disease such as arthritis, diabetes, heart
problems, cancer, and hypertension. 252
The impact of the 2008-09 recession on poverty is not
yet known but based on past experience, poverty can be
expected to rise for several years, well after the turnaround in stock markets and the GDP. If the poverty
rate moves up in line with the experience of the last recession, the rate could be expected to average 11.9% in
2009. It may take many years, possibly up to a decade,
for poverty levels to return to pre-recessionary levels.253

n 2007, about 13% of all Canadian households –
525,000 families and 1.3 million unattached
individuals – were living in poverty. The highest
poverty rates over the past three decades were
experienced in the mid-1990s in the aftermath of the
1991-92 recession.

direct contrast to income security programs supporting seniors. Social assistance programs, as currently
structured in Canada, in effect, contribute to poverty
through very low benefit levels and punitive rules that
require households to draw down their assets significantly before benefiting from assistance.256

The poverty rate among elderly families has fallen
sharply, from over 18% in 1976, to under 3.9% in
1989, and down to only 1.5% in 2007. The poverty
rate among elderly unattached individuals remains
much higher than the rate among families, but poverty
levels have fallen for the latter as well over this period
– from a very high 55.9% to 13.0% among men and
from an even higher 68.1% to 14.3% among women.
Income security programs for seniors such as Old Age
Security, Guaranteed Income Supplement and the
Canada Pension Plan have been responsible for much
of this dramatic improvement.254

The poverty situation for female lone-parent families
has improved sharply over the last decade. Their poverty rate (2007) is down to 23.6% compared to poverty
rates above 50% as recently as 1996. The improvements
have been largely driven by higher levels of paid labour
force participation, rising incomes, and an aging of
the typical female lone-parent family.257 In spite of this
improvement, about 250,000 children under the age
of 18, or 39% of all poor children, live in female loneparent families. This ratio was up from about one-third
in 1976 and almost one-half in 1992 and 2002.

Two-parent families with three or more earners in the
family also had a very low risk of poverty. This is true
of all households with multiple earners. On the other
hand, families with only one earner, whether married
couples or female lone-parent families, have an elevated
risk of poverty, as some jobs simply do not pay well or
offer insufficient hours.

For some households, poverty has lessened over the last
three decades. For others, especially unattached men and
women, lone-parent families, and single earner families,
the risk of poverty remains high. Certain populations –
persons with disabilities, Aboriginal people and new Canadians also experience high levels of economic insecurity.

Poverty is even higher among unattached individuals
under age 65: 35.1% of unattached women and 29.7%
of unattached men lived in poverty in 2007. The recession of 2008-09 is likely to drive these rates higher.
Non-elderly families without income earners have
very high rates of poverty, as they typically rely on
government programs such as social assistance. In
nearly all situations, provincial welfare incomes fall far
short of all credible low income measures.255 This is in

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And so what?

The costs of poverty to society are substantial, both
individually and collectively. A recent report by the
Ontario Association of Food Banks demonstrates how
the remedial costs of poverty related to health care and
crime, combined with foregone taxes and lost productivity and opportunity costs, result in an estimated
$32-$38 billion price tag for that province… each
year.258 Recent reports from the United Kingdom and
the United States also provide a forceful accounting of
how much these issues – and the existing approach to
poverty – costs society as a whole.259

anadian families work hard. But for too
many, working hard is not enough. Despite
strong economic growth, and historically low
unemployment rates in 2006, about one in six of all
employed workers in Canada over the age of 15 –
almost 2.2 million – had a low paying job in 2006. 260
Over one million adults aged 25 and older were paid
less than $10 an hour in 2006, including 721,000 adults
who worked full-time, representing 7% of all full-time
adult workers. This is a low estimate of the number of
low-wage workers in Canada: many more self-employed
workers who didn’t earn an hourly wage or salary took
home less than $10 for every hour they worked.
A wage of less than $10 an hour is widely considered
to be low pay in Canada because a single individual
working full-time all year would need at least this
amount to reach Statistics Canada’s Low-income
Cut-off. In 2008, the highest minimum wage in
Canada was $8.75 in Ontario. Anyone working at a
minimum wage in any province is guaranteed to fall
below the poverty threshold, unless there are other
earners in the family.261
The 2006 Census provides another measure of working poverty. In 2006, some 1.4 million Canadians who
worked full-time for a full-year earned less than $20,000.
Among all women who worked full-time for a full-year,
about 18% earned less than $20,000; the respective
figure for full-time, full-year male workers was 12%.262
Not all low-income workers live in poor families. Teens
and young adults, for example, make up a large segment
of the low wage workforce, a majority of whom live
with their parents. And not all of the working poor are
low paid; the working poor may earn wages in excess of
$10 per hour but are more likely to work part-time or

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on temporary contract. That said, a significant group
of families engaged in the paid labour market do live
in poverty. One study estimates that among families
with significant labour attachment, the rate of poverty
is 7% – accounting for over one-third (35%) of all poor
families and 44% (or 322,000) of all children living in
poverty.263

And so what?

Many jobs in Canada simply do not pay well enough
to adequately support one’s self or one’s family. Low
wage jobs are often temporary or part-time, and they
typically provide few if any benefits beyond those legislated by law. As a structural – and what appears to be
a permanent feature of the economy – many families
experience the impact of low-wage work and poverty.
The working poor are more likely to escape poverty
in the longer run than the “welfare” poor. However,
between 1996 and 2001, the working poor spent on
average three years in low income and 40% of them
experienced persistent poverty. Furthermore, many
of those who exited poverty over the same period did
so mainly because of a change in their family circumstances, not because of their progression in the labour
market. In fact, five years later, close to 50% of those
who were working poor in 1996 still had low earnings
and would not have been able to provide for themselves had they lived alone.264
There are a variety of well-known ways to improve the
situation of the working-poor in Canada. Improvements to provincially set minimum wages, pro-rating
benefits for part-time workers, public investments
in literacy, education and training, and government
programs that supplement low-wages are all proven
strategies to enhance the economic security and mobility of workers and their families.265

Percentage distribution of working-age, low income families and children by work status of main income recipient (2006)
Low income families

Low income children

35%

33%

Persons working
for pay 910+ hours/year

Non-earners

16%
Full-time
students

36%

Non-earners

14%

44%

Persons working for pay
1-909 hours/year

Pesons working for pay
910+ hours/year

13%

9%

Persons working
for pay 1-909
hours/year

Full-time
students

Note: The “working poor” are defined as those where the main income recipient aged 18-64 (excluding full-time students) was employed for a minimum of 910 hours
in a year and lived in a family where the total disposable income was below the Market Basket Measure (MBM ) low-income (poverty) threshold.
Source: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (2008), Low Income in Canada: 2000-2006 Using the Market Basket Measure, Final Report, SP-864-10-08E, October.

Percentage of individuals who worked full-time (30 hours or more per week) for a full-year (49-52 weeks)
with wage and salary earnings of less than $20,000 before income taxes, by Province/Territory (2005)
CAN

hile food banks were originally intended
only as temporary stop gap measures until
such time as governments could strengthen
social safety nets and eradicate poverty, they have
unfortunately become community institutions.266
Findings from a survey undertaken in March 2009 by
Food Banks Canada show that almost 800,000 people
turned to Food Banks or an affiliated food program that
month. This was an increase of 18% compared to the
same period in 2008, the largest single year-over-year
increase on record. Almost one in ten of those turning
to food banks did so for the first time.267
As in the past, children made up the largest single
group of food bank users in 2009, at 37.2%. The share
of all users who were children was highest in Manitoba
(48.7%) and Saskatchewan (44.4%). About one-half
of assisted households had at least one child; 25.0% of
those assisted were lone parent families and another
23.8% were two-parent families with children. Twelve
percent of households turning to food banks were couples without children and 39.2% were single people.
About 13.6% of food bank users reported that employment was their primary source of income with another
5.3% reporting that Employment Insurance was
currently their primary source of income. The largest
percentage of clients (51.5%) relied on social assistance as their primary source of income, 13.0% were
on disability-related income supports, 6.3% were on a
pension, 1.1% were living on student loans and 5.2%
had no income. About 4.7% of those assisted by food
banks were “homeless” as they were living on the street,
in shelters or temporarily with family or friends.

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Health Canada research found that almost one in ten
households was “food insecure” in 2004.268 More recent
data reveal that 7.7% of households, or almost 956,000
households, experienced food insecurity in 2007-2008.
About 5.1% experienced moderate food insecurity, and
2.7% experienced severe hardship.269
Not surprising, households experiencing the greatest
financial insecurity were at highest risk of experiencing food insecurity. This is certainly the case among
those who rely on social assistance as their main
source of income. Households with children, especially lone-parent households, are also more likely to
be food insecure. Off-reserve Aboriginal households
are more than three times as likely as non-Aboriginal
households to experience food insecurity.

And so what?

Food bank use does not account for all food insecurity
in Canada. Estimates propose that the food insecurity
rate is four to five times the rate of food bank use. This
suggests that the number of Canadians who experienced food insecurity in 2009 could have been as high
as 3.9 million.270
The surge in food bank users as highlighted in the data
from Food Banks Canada is one of the most visible impacts of the recession. In Canada’s current social policy
configuration, the dominant approach to dealing with
these problems, and with the negative outcomes they
produce, is to address them after the fact. As a result,
Canadian families, food banks, shelters, social service
agencies, and hospitals bear the heavy burden created
when individuals fall into poverty.

et worth is another important indicator of
financial health and security. A family’s net
worth or wealth is the amount that would be
left if it sold off all marketable assets, including the
home, vehicle, business, and investments, and paid off
all debts.

2005, the median net worth of homeowners who were
still carrying a mortgage was $217,000, while homeowners without mortgages – mostly older Canadians
– had a median net worth of $521,000. By contrast,
the median net worth of individuals who did not own
a home was $10,600.275

Among Canadian households, the median net worth271
in 2005 was $148,400, a 23.2% increase from 1999,
after adjusting for inflation.272 Median wealth was
predictably higher among older families and individuals. By contrast, younger families carry higher levels of
debt to income.

The increase in the value of real estate between 1999
and 2005 accounted for almost one-half of the increase
in the net worth of Canadians over this period.276 Assets held in private pension vehicles such as employer
pension plans, Registered Retirement Savings Plans
(RRSPs) and Registered Retirement Income Funds
(RRIFs) were the second largest contributor.

Young families typically start with low incomes and
high expenses related to establishing a home, paying
down student debt, and having children. Young people
and families take on debt to address these needs. As
income increases over time and financial need drops,
families pay down their debt and begin to accumulate
assets. Evidence from the 2005 Survey of Financial
Security reveals that indebtedness typically peaks by
the time a family’s major income recipient reaches 40,
and then falls after retirement. On the other hand,
the proportion of families with investment income
increases steadily, peaking in old age.273
As the chart shows, in 2005, median net worth was
$18,000 for those aged 15 to 34, $135,500 for those
aged 35 to 44, and $231,900 for those aged 45 to 54.
Median net worth peaked among persons aged 55 to
64 ($407,400) and was $303,200 among persons aged
65 and over.274
For most Canadians, their home is their major asset
and its equity the largest component of their wealth,
accounting for one-third (33.4%) of total assets. In

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And so what?

Building some level of positive net financial worth is
an important component of financial well-being and
security. Financial and property assets provide important protections against sudden loss of income or
unexpected expenses, and they provide greater security
in retirement, supplementing income from seniors’
benefits. Further, assets can generate further wealth
through return on investments and savings.
Through the early 2000s, the number of Canadians
investing in assets such as real estate, RRSPs, mutual
funds, and the value of those same assets, increased
markedly. However, for many, the acquisition of those
assets was financed largely through debt. The crash of
the stock market in the fall of 2008 revealed the precarious state of the household finances of families and
the inherent volatility of market assets. It also revealed
the critical importance of sound financial regulation
and public programs such as Old Age Security and
public pensions in providing for the economic security
of Canadians.

ising housing costs did not deter Canadians
from purchasing real estate over the past decade.
Rather, strong economic growth and ready access
to credit propelled the numbers of home owners to
record levels. According to the Census, the rate of home
ownership was 68% in 2006, the highest level recorded
over the 35 years for which comparable data are available.
Most home owners (58%) have a mortgage, which is
also at the highest level of the last quarter-century.

Housing prices climbed through the last decade, falling only briefly during the 2008-09 recession. By late
2009, average house prices had reached $340,000,
five times the average after-tax incomes of Canadian
households. This compares to an average of 3.7 times
over the past two decades.277 At the same time, the median annual shelter cost for all households was about
$9,000 in 2006, an increase of 19% over 2001.
About one-quarter of all households now spend more
than 30% of their annual incomes on shelter, which is
a level the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) considers “unaffordable”. Nationwide,
about 18% of homeowners spend more than 30%,
whereas 40% of renters spend more than 30% of
their incomes on shelter.
CMHC also calculates the proportion of households in “core housing need”, that is, the proportion
who live in housing that does not meet housing
standards and who do not have income sufficient
to purchase acceptable housing. As of 2006, 1.5
million Canadian households were in core housing
need, representing 12.7% of Canadian households.
This number was essentially unchanged compared
to 2001 figures.278

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Housing need was much more common for renters
(27.2% were in core housing need) than for home
owners (6.3%). Renters accounted for 65.7% of all
core housing need. Across the provinces and territories, core housing need is most prevalent in the three
Territories. Among the ten provinces, the incidence
of need is greatest in British Columbia, Ontario, and
Newfoundland and Labrador. The incidence of core
housing need was very high among lone-parent families headed by young adults, recent immigrants and
Aboriginal peoples.279

And so what?

A number of factors have contributed to rising rates of
home ownership. For many families, low interest rates,
long amortization periods and relatively low down-payment requirements have made ownership feasible, even
as house prices have increased. Home ownership can offer tremendous economic security. However, high levels
of mortgage debt leave a growing number vulnerable to
income disruptions or rising interest rates.280
For other families, the costs of home ownership
are simply too high. A report by the Federation of
Canadian Municipalities labels the current situation
“A National Disaster.” “Everybody needs a home, but
decent, affordable housing is currently out of reach
for a growing number of Canadians. A lack of affordable housing, with homelessness as its most serious
consequence, compromises the health and well-being
of individuals and the quality of life of communities
and Canada as a whole. Too many people, particularly
children, are living in temporary shelters or sub-standard and sometimes unsafe housing. Too many people
are living on the street, straining the ability of social
service agencies to help them.”281

Proportion of households in core housing need, by household type (2006)
Total

Renters

Owners

12.7%

27.2%

6.3%

Senior-led

14.4

31.4

7.9

Family

5.4

15.3

3.7

Individuals Living Alone

26.2

38.8

16.3

12.2

26.2

5.8

10.0

26.7

5.0

Couples with Children

7.2

23.0

4.3

Couples without Children

5.5

14.0

3.0

Lone Parent Families

28.6

43.5

14.9

Female

31.7

46.2

16.8

Male

15.9

27.9

9.0

Non-Family

18.9

25.6

10.0

Individuals Living Alone

20.1

27.9

10.4

Individuals Sharing with Others

12.4

15.1

7.6

All households

Non-Senior-led
Family

Acceptable housing is defined as adequate and suitable shelter that can be obtained without spending 30 per cent or more of
before-tax household income. Adequate shelter is housing that is not in need of major repair. Suitable shelter is housing that is not
crowded, meaning that it has sufficient bedrooms for the size and make-up of the occupying household. The subset of households
classified as living in unacceptable housing and unable to access acceptable housing is considered to be in core housing need.
Source: CMHC (2009), "Housing conditions and core housing need," Canadian Housing Observer. http://schl.com/en/corp/about/cahoob/data/
data_013.cfm

edian wealth has increased in Canada since
the 1970s, notably in the last decade.
Between 1999 and 2005, median net worth
for all households (including families and unattached
individuals) increased by 23.2% to $148,400. The
average net worth increased even more, by 29.5%,
reaching $364,300.282 The fact that average net worth is
significantly higher than the median reflects the very
unequal distribution of wealth in Canada.
In reality, there is a very small percentage of households that account for a large share of total wealth,
making average net worth much higher than the median. In 2005, the 20% of households with the highest
net worth held 69.2% of all personal wealth, while the
bottom 60% held only 10.8%.
The chart shows that in 2005 the poorest fifth of
households (which includes families and unattached
individuals) brought in 4.7% of the after-income tax
incomes generated in the economy and had little or no
accumulated wealth. The lower-middle fifth of households received 10.6% of aggregate after-tax income,
but held only 2.3% of total accumulated wealth. Together these groups comprised 40% of all households
(5.4 million households), but they received just 15.3%
of aggregate annual income and held virtually none of
the wealth.283

The middle fifth of households (2.7 million households) accounted for 16.5% of total after-tax income
and held 8.4% of total household wealth, while the
richest fifth of households (also 2.7 million households) brought in 44.0% of the annual incomes and
held 69.2% of the accumulated wealth. Since the
1970s, this group has increased their share of both
incomes and wealth.

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In 2005, there were about one million Canadian
households with a net worth of one million dollars
or more. They comprised only 8.2% of all households
but held almost one-half (47%) of total accumulated
wealth in Canada.
Over the 1999 to 2005 period, the only period for which
comparable data are available, the richest 20% saw their
average wealth increase by $297,900 or by 31%. The dollar gain in wealth of the richest 20% was larger than the
sum of the gains for the other 80% combined.

And so what?

There is a clear relationship between income and
wealth accumulation. Quite simply, the lower the level
of family income, the lower the capacity to accumulate
wealth – through savings, investments, or the purchase
of appreciating assets such as real estate. Lower income
families, for example, are less likely to have jobs with
employer pension plans, and they typically have little
capacity to save, contribute to Registered Retirement
Savings Plans (RRSPs), or purchase homes. Lower
income families relying on social assistance also face
restrictions on the ownership of certain assets as a
condition of receiving income support.
The capacity to accumulate wealth is also shaped by
family circumstances. For instance, the declining private pension coverage of married men has been offset
somewhat by the increasing pension coverage of married women – underscoring the financial advantage of
having multiple earners within families.284
Growing wealth inequality since the mid 1980s suggests
that “Canadian families are becoming increasingly unequal
in their capacity to mitigate income shocks in bad times or
to initiate forward-looking strategies in good times.”285

eople seldom base their decisions about having
children on financial considerations alone: it is,
nevertheless, an important consideration.286 Yet
there is little information available to Canadians about
the costs associated with raising children.

actually spend to raise their children varies greatly
depending on family income. Compared to the middle
one-third of couple families with children, the lowest
one-third of families spent 27% less while the highest
one-third spent 45% more.288

The Home Economics section of Manitoba Agriculture has estimated the cost of raising children to the
age of 18, but these numbers are based on families
living in Winnipeg, and the latest estimates pertain to
the year 2004.287 While costs will certainly vary from
one part of the country to another, the Manitoba Agriculture estimates are at least illustrative of the considerable financial resources required. Their figures show
a cost of about $167,000 to raise a boy or girl to the
age of 18, or an average of about $9,300 per year. Boys,
accordingly, cost an extra $3,770 to feed for those 18
years but cost $2,414 less for clothing and $934 less for
personal care.

And so what?

The most expensive year is when the child is one year
old with over $10,000 needed in that year alone. Costs
are lowest for boys aged 12 ($6,786) and girls aged 13
and 14 (about $7,000 each year). At those ages, the costs
of childcare decrease while the cost of transportation
increases. Educational costs rise around the age of 15.
These numbers, of course, only tell part of the story.
One American study suggests that what families

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Most Canadians intend to have at least one child, and
many will have two or more. The money required to
raise children is considerable, especially considering
that children are staying longer in the parental home,
often well in to their 20s.
The financial cost of raising children includes not only
the direct expenditures of food, clothing, etc., but also
the “opportunity costs” associated with lost wages for
those parents or guardians who withdraw, even if temporarily, from the labour market. Opportunity costs may
be particularly high for those having children at younger
ages and who delay plans for post-secondary education.
It is also important to remember that the costs of
raising children far exceed those borne by individual
parents. The entire public infrastructure supporting
children – schools, hospitals, playgrounds, etc. – are
supported collectively through tax dollars. As with
parents, governments commit to the expenses because
they are not simply viewed as expenses, but as investments in the next generation.